Gehenna
by notmanos
Summary: (Pre-season 1) After a case goes slightly wrong, young Sam and Dean decide to take a break at Bobby's place. But the timing couldn't have been worse, as a bloody case from Bobby's recent pasts surfaces once more, and things take an even darker turn.
1. Sorrow

N.B.: I just had to write a story about Bobby, Sam, and Dean. So here it is.

* * *

 _ **1- Sorrow**_

Sam checked his watch, and wondered if Dean had finished digging up the graves yet.

He did feel a pang of guilt for not being there helping him, which was why he was loitering across the street like a stalker, keeping an eye on the haunted house. It was a weird situation, making it even more vital that they get this done as soon as possible. The house was sold after the deaths of the previous owners, but the family that moved in was plagued by accidents and injuries they attributed to "evil spirits". The house was then sold to a woman, Allison Gudas, who made something of a living as a professional skeptic. She was currently away, making it a great time to investigate what was going on.

From what they could tell, they were dealing with a poltergeist. The problem was they had three candidates. The family that had all died in the house previous to the accident plagued owners: Betty Stanfield, John Stanfield, or their teenage daughter, Penny. Betty died of cancer, John of a heart attack, and Penny of suicide. All died in that house, although at separate times. Dean put his money on it being Penny, since she was a teenager (prime poltergeist years), and had died by her own hand, but John had a rather notorious anger problem, including past instances of spousal abuse and aggravated assault in a bar fight, where he blinded some poor bastard in one eye. A violent asshole in life could easily be a violent asshole in death. And they couldn't discount Betty just because she was the wife. That was just sexism. She could be as bad as her husband for all they knew, just not caught at it.

So Dean was digging up all of them and salting and burning the lot. Sam was meant to be helping him, but they had an argument earlier, and Sam just need to get away from Dean and clear his head. The argument was, in retrospect, really stupid. He wasn't even sure what it was ultimately about, except Sam was tired of this. Why did they have to have such bizarre lives? Kids his age were supposed to be stressing about the SATs and homework, and hanging out at the mall, worrying about the spring dance, not digging up corpses and breaking into haunted houses. It didn't help that Dean seemed to love this life. His enthusiasm for Dad's bullshit just added to the trouble. Why? Dad seemed to treat Dean even worse than him, and yet Dean was like an eager puppy, always wanting strokes and praise, no matter how he treated him. Sam wondered if maybe he shouldn't take psychology in college, figure out what made a person that way. Besides low self-esteem and Stockholm Syndrome.

And he wasn't about to tell him he'd had a weird dream about something bad happening at this house. Because he wasn't a psychic like some of Dad's weird friends. It was just … nerves? Yeah, anxiety. He was afraid something bad would happen here, and he dreamed about it. Nothing more than that. Which was why there was no point in mentioning it to Dean. Or anyone.

Sam shivered and hunched deeper into his jacket, watching his breath turn into butts before him. He really should have been digging up graves with Dean. The activity alone would have kept him warm, not to mention the burning of the bodies. What did he expect in January in Ohio? It wasn't the Sun Belt.

He was stamping his feet, trying to keep warm, as a car pulled into the driveway of the house.

"Shit," he muttered, crossing the road. Just from the designer coat, and neatly trimmed brown hair, he knew Allison was back way too early from where she was supposed to be going. Maybe her flight was cancelled.

She was inside her house by the time Sam reached her yard, and he walked up the path, wondering if she would even talk to him. He was a sixteen (seventeen in four months!) year old boy, pounding on her door near midnight. If he was her, he wouldn't open the door to him.

Still, he pressed the doorbell. "Ms. Gudas? I'm sorry to bother you so late, but you really shouldn't be in this house."

After a moment, she opened the door a crack, looking up at him beyond a chain lock, which was still attached. These last couple of months he'd had a kind of freakish growth spurt, that made him taller then Dean and Dad both. After years of looking up to them, it was weird looking down at them. In more ways than one.

Although he could only see one of her gray-blue eyes, it seemed to be communicating great hostility. "Who the hell are you?"

"My name's Sam Winchester, ma'am. I know you don't believe in this sort of thing, and I don't blame you, really, it sounds crazy. But there's a dangerous poltergeist in your house. We're trying to get rid of it, but –"

She slammed the door in his face. "Ma'am? Please, I know how insane this sounds, but –"

"Go away or I call the police!" she shouted. It sounded like she was well away from the door.

Fuck. What did he do? Sam figured he'd have to hope for the best. Maybe the poltergeist would be quiet tonight. It wasn't always active. It seemed to hold to a schedule that neither he nor Dean or Bobby could ferret out.

Sam had gotten half way across the yard when he heard Allison scream.

He charged back at the door, which was still locked. It wasn't the ghost holding it shut, was it? He tried to kick down the door like he'd seen Dean do, but he didn't hit the right place, as the door stayed shut, and pain traveled up his leg. So he stopped doing it Dean's way and did it his own way, throwing himself bodily into the door shoulder first. On the third hit, the jamb splintered, and he fell inside the foyer.

Allison was still screaming, so he followed the noise to the kitchen, pulling out the iron crowbar he brought with him, just in case of ghost encounter. It looked like Allison was pinned against her refrigerator by a spectral figure, mostly translucent but still undeniably there. Sam advanced on the figure, crowbar raised, but then the spirit turned towards him.

Mid-swing, he was thrown across the room, hitting a cabinet at absolutely the wrong angle, and before he hit the floor, he heard as well as felt a _crack_. The pain was electric as it surged up his arm, and he screamed as he hit the floor and landed on it. Yep, pretty sure that was broken.

The specter had turned its attention to him, and he saw it was a teenaged girl in what looked like sweats. So it was Penny. That made sense.

Suddenly debris pelted him as all the drawers in the counter above him opened and turned upside down. Despite the fact that it was mostly cutlery, it didn't really hurt, except when he tried to move, and then the pain in his right arm went nuclear. "Penny, stop!" he said, biting back a scream. He did his best to blink away the tears of pain, and look around. He'd dropped the crowbar, and it was somehow under the kitchen table. Way too far away for him to reach it. Damn it. "I know you're angry. I know your life was miserable. But she has nothing to do with that, and neither do I. You have the power to stop this, Penny. Don't be like your father."

She glared at him, her eyes distorted black holes in her head, and Sam found himself thrown up into the ceiling, and then dropped back to the floor, where he landed on his broken arm again and screamed. Allison was still screaming too, which didn't help anything.

Sam rolled over onto his back, his right arm throbbing like a second heartbeat, his consciousness still reeling from taking a ride to the ceiling and back. The semi-translucent figure of Penny was looming over him, reaching down, and there was nothing he could do to stop her. He couldn't reach her. The fact that her face was distorted, as if partially rotted, was simply a reflection of what her state of mind was. After a while, ghosts went crazy. Not all went full poltergeist. Those that did usually had miserable lives or deaths (or both), and a shit ton of rage, that just mutated into something even worse over time. He really should have stayed in the graveyard with Dean.

She was reaching towards his face when her fingertips started to glow, and suddenly her arm was consumed in fire. It ran up her entire body, and she screeched in horror as she burned her away to nothing.

Sam could have cheered. Dean had decided to go with his hunch and burn her first. Thank God. He tasted blood in his mouth, and hoped he hadn't bit his tongue. "What the hell just happened?" Allison shouted.

"You're welcome," Sam said, and closed his eyes. The darkness was nice and quiet.

* * *

Bobby was not surprised that Dean met him in the parking lot. "This is all my fault," he began, his body language betraying all the hallmark tics of anxiety and probably way too much caffeine. He had dark circles under his eyes that might as well have been drawn on in Sharpie. "We had a fight, I don't really know what it was about, he was just being a damn teenager, but I shouldn't-"

"Son," Bobby said, grabbing Dean firmly by the shoulders and stilling him. Dean looked up with his head slightly bowed, like he was a dog expecting a smack across the nose with a rolled newspaper. That made something in Bobby's gut roil. _Damn you, John. What did you do to your fucking kids?_ "Sam just has a broken arm and a few cracked ribs, right?"

"Yeah, but I –"

"Shut it. Considering he tangled with a poltergeist, he got off easy. And stop it with this nonsense that it was all your fault. He made his choice. He protected the homeowner, and you got the job done. You both did what you were supposed to do, and nobody died. We're ahead of the game."

He stared at Dean until he believed him, and finally Dean sighed, shoulders sagging in exhaustion and relief. "I still shoulda gone after him."

"Then maybe you'd both be dead, so I'm glad you didn't." He patted Dean on the back, trying to get him to ease up on himself. No one was harder on Dean than Dean, although John tried his damnedest. He'd just conditioned the boy too well. Somehow the message 'you can always improve' got twisted into "you will never be good enough', and considering that Dean was an adult now (well, legally in a few days, but at heart he'd pretty much been an adult since Bobby had known him), that message was never going to change. "You been up all night?"

He nodded. "I was just finishing up at the graveyard when a doctor from the E.R. called me. I was the emergency contact on Sam's phone. The homeowner apparently called an ambulance for him, as the poltergeist knocked him out. They wanted to keep him overnight 'cause, you know, head injuries, but he doesn't have a concussion. I know the kid, he's fine, and he's itching to get outta here."

Bobby nodded, and let Dean lead the way inside the hospital. John was supposedly busy hunting some werewolves down in Texas, so Dean called him, figuring Sam probably needed to get off the road and recover for a bit. Bobby suspected Dean also wanted a break too, but wasn't about to admit it. But the kid looked all in, exhausted, wired, the whole nine yards of fucked up. He looked a little skinny too, like maybe he hadn't been eating so well. Which was kind of a warning sign with Dean, as he was a notorious chow hound.

Did he suspect that John wasn't really hunting werewolves, but following up on some rumors about demon nests and yellow eyes? Because that's what he was really doing. He didn't tell Dean or Sam, because they'd want to come with him, or at least Dean would. And John didn't want that. He wouldn't even tell Bobby why, except it was better for the boys to stay as far from demons as possible.

Which was bullshit. If John was actually worried about exposing the boys to danger, he never would have taken them on the road in the first place. So what was he up to? John could lie to his boys, but Bobby hated being lied to and expecting to just take it. But John was a stubborn asshole, and Bobby couldn't make him tell him the truth. Not yet. Maybe he was afraid it would get back to his boys.

So Bobby had driven all the way to Ohio, put on a (monkey) suit, and was pretending to be their dad so he could check Sam out of the hospital, and then start the long drive back to his place. He kind of felt bad for Sam and Dean, because he was all they had without their Dad, and who would ever settle for him if they had another option? He was a crotchety old drunk with an auto wrecking yard and not much else.

Dean hadn't been kidding about Sam's eagerness to leave. He was dressed and sitting on the edge of his hospital bed, right arm in a cast and a sling. He was the color of boiled oatmeal, so Bobby figured he was still dealing with some pain, but the moment they entered the room he hopped to his feet. "Thanks, Bobby."

"I wasn't gonna leave you here," he replied, not sure why either of them would thank him. It was the only decent thing to do. (And why John wasn't hauling his ass here he had no idea.) Sam was sixteen, sure, and much like Dean acted a little older than he was, but he was still a kid. His actual Dad should be here, not him.

Bobby mentally cursed John for the first half of the drive back. He stopped for some food, which Dean suggested so Sam could take some pain meds. Dean was very much like a mother hen to Sam, which was both sweet and distressing. He was so accustomed to looking after his brother he did it automatically, and he was almost treating Sam more like his son than his brother, which was just another thing Bobby wanted to punch John for. John was Sam's father, and he should fucking act like it more, not delegate it part of the time to Dean. But he'd had this argument with him before, and had gotten exactly nowhere. He and John maybe spoke a handful of words to each other now, and all because of the boys. Not that they knew. They tried to keep them out of this argument. It wasn't fair to them.

But once the pain pills made Sam nod off, Dean finally gave in to his own exhaustion and slept too, propped up against the passenger door like he was going to jump out the moment he woke up. Always ready to fight. Bobby noticed at least one gun bulge under his coat, and maybe a knife too. He couldn't tell if Sam had any weapons on him, but probably. Would they be Winchesters if they weren't always ready to fight? Bobby was kind of tired himself, but anger at John Winchester more than kept him awake.

As soon as Bobby parked the car, the jolt seemed to wake up Dean, who shook Sam awake. It was like a drill they all knew so well. Hell, they had their own designated rooms upstairs, and he let them go ahead and lead the way.

He knew he should probably get some shut eye himself, but instead he stayed in the kitchen and had a beer, and called John. He got his voice mail, so he told him simply he had the boys, and he could pick them up whenever he was done on his hunting trip. He tried not to let too much sarcasm escape into his voice, but it was difficult. It wasn't that he didn't get it. Bobby had lost a wife too. But John had kids, and he should have devoted his energy to looking after them, not training them to take on all monsters single handedly.

But what the fuck did he know? Sam and Dean weren't his sons. They just sort of felt like it.

He went to the living room and settled in to catch the weather report, as they supposedly had a big storm headed their way, and he needed to know what he should prepare for. Winter, even this late into it, was always a boom time for the yard. Lots of cars spun out on black ice, lots of jackasses figured their tires were "good enough" or they could handle driving in the ice and snow, and about eighty percent of the time they were completely wrong. The lucky ones just wrecked their cars. The unlucky ones … well, that went without saying. It was actually good to have Dean here, because he could help him out with towing the wrecks and evaluating them. He was really good with cars.

Even though the boys were upstairs, the house felt different. Bobby got so accustomed to being by himself, when they stayed here, it was like the energy changed. There was genuine life in the house. When he was by himself again, it was like the place was empty in spite of him. Sometimes he felt like a ghost, haunting his own life.

Bobby dozed off without realizing it, until the ring of the phone woke him. He stumbled bleary eyed towards his phone bank, until he figured out which one was ringing. Not a hunter phone; just his. That was a relief, as he was pretty sure he wasn't awake enough to pretend to be an FBI agent. "Yeah?"

"Bobby? It's Warren."

"Oh, hey." Warren – Officer Paul Warren – was a local cop, but he knew what he was, and occasionally let him know when there might be a case he should look into. And all because Bobby once saved him from a werewolf attack. Apparently he needed to go around saving the entire department from monster attacks so they wouldn't just think he was a delusional old drunk. "I'm gonna guess you're not just calling to shoot the shit."

"Wish I was." He sighed heavily before he dove into what he had to say. "Remember the Hicks case?"

That made Bobby suck in a breath as if punched. Bastard motherfucker child killer who plagued about half of this state and a neighboring one. Bobby figured out he was possessed by a demon, but had to sneak in an exorcism as part of a manhunt that ran the guy, Hicks, to ground. He exorcised the demon, but the guy died anyway. He killed eight kids that they knew of, and was suspected in five other disapperances. That was ugly in more ways than one. He brutalized those kids, and killed them in gruesome – cannibalistic-ways. Just about every cop who worked the case needed intensive therapy afterward, and some of them quit. But it was the ritualized brutality and cannibalism that tipped Bobby that it might be a demon and not a person. An especially sadistic demon. "Believe me, I've tried to drink that one away, but it hasn't worked so far."

Warren exhaled a shaky breath, and Bobby had a sudden, sick feeling what he was about to say. "I think he's back. Is that possible? Could he be back?"

His stomach lurched, and he was glad it was fairly empty. "Why d'ya say that?"

"The Crawford boy went missing day before yesterday. We just found him. What's left of him."

Christ no. Why the hell was this happening again?


	2. American Horror

_**2 – American Horror**_

Warren said he'd leave the relevant documents in his mailbox, as that was the system when he wanted to leave files for Bobby. He couldn't be seen giving things to the town drunk, could he? Putting it in his mailbox was just safer all the way around.

Bobby wanted to tell him not to, but didn't. He really didn't want to see another kid's corpse, mangled to the point where it was difficult to say it ever was a human being. But if Warren had to look at it, so would he. Maybe he'd see a clue, a hint, something. Or at least that's what he told himself.

Exorcisms just sent demons back to Hell. It didn't kill them, and didn't mean they couldn't come back. But he'd never heard of one demon coming back to one region in such a short amount of time. If it was the same demon, it begged the question why? What was it after? It was on a mission, and that alone meant nothing good. What kind of mission could a demon possibly be on? Balls. He didn't need this kind of shit right now.

As if to bring that point home, he heard footsteps on the stairs. "Mind if I rustle up some grub?" Dean asked. He looked a little brighter, although he still had remnants of dark circles under his eyes. Sleep debt was hard to make up, even at his age.

"Help yourself." Bobby then wondered if he had some food in the place, beyond canned shit in the cupboards. He was pretty sure he did. He went shopping last week, right? Sometimes he could only tell the days apart by what disaster had unfolded.

From the sounds in the kitchen, Dean must have found something edible. It was after a couple of minutes that Dean stuck his head around the doorway, and asked, "Do you know where Dad actually is?"

Yeah. At a certain point, it was impossible to lie to kids. "Texas, like he said." At least Bobby thought that part was true. What he was after was the fiction.

Dean grimaced. "He's not hunting werewolves."

Bobby got up and wandered into the kitchen. Sam was probably still sleeping, but it was best if they kept him out of this. He was developing quite a chip on his shoulder, and he didn't blame him in the least. Bobby imagined he had one as well, but John wasn't his father. And good thing for John, considering what Bobby had done to his own dad. "What makes you say that?"

Dean gave him the slightest smirk as he continued making his sandwich. "Because we could help him with werewolves. And he had this look on his face …" Dean trailed off, and shook his head at the thought. "He's keeping something from us. I don't like it."

"Don't blame you. He's keeping it from me too."

Dean raised an eyebrow, studying him for veracity. Bobby would have been offended, but it was only fair. He had to look out for himself and his little brother. Let him be as skeptical as he needed to be. It had kept them alive this long, against all sorts of odds.

Finally, Dean nodded, accepting that Bobby was as in the dark as he was. "The secrets that man has."

"Tell me about it."

Dean went back to fridge, and grabbed a beer. Bobby cleared his throat, and Dean looked at him with the slightest shrug. "I'm twenty one in three days."

Bobby was aware of that. He was also aware Dean was already a dedicated drinker, even though he tried to hide it. He was not the only Winchester with secrets. It ran in that family like a virus. Bobby made a show of thinking about it before conceding with a nod. "Fine. _One_ beer."

"Thanks." Dean popped the top and had a long swallow before cleaning up what little mess he'd made in the kitchen. Didn't even have to ask him. Even Bobby usually let his messes accumulate before he bothered to clean them. He had to give that to John, if nothing else – Sam and Dean were both mind blowingly polite. They were really good kids. He hoped John appreciated that.

Dean settled at the small kitchen table, and took a couple of bites from his sandwich before he asked, "What's goin' on? A case?"

Bobby would have asked how he knew something was bothering him, but that would have insulted his intelligence. You could probably pick up how bothered he was from space.

He wasn't going to discuss it with him, because he was a kid and didn't need to be brought into this shit, but then realized he wasn't going to pull a John Winchester on him. It was a bloody, ugly case, yeah, but he might have already been through something similar or even worse. They may have just been kids, but Sam and Dean were already better hunters than a few of the adults he knew. Besides, maybe bouncing ideas off someone would spark some ideas. So he sat at the table across from Dean, and shorthanded the case for him. He left out the grislier details, but Dean asked for them anyway, still eating all the while. (Bobby still left them out. Even Dean couldn't have kept eating through those facts.) Dean listened, nodding and eating, until Bobby got to the end of the story.

"Some demons eat people?" he asked. "That's a new one on me."

"It's very old school."

"Old school as in what, an old demon?" Bobby nodded. "How old exactly?"

"Hard to say. But some of the lore say there are ones going back thousands of years. Maybe even longer than that. Older than any humans could imagine."

Dean raised his eyebrows at that. "Wow. Too old for the AARP even. So if we exorcise them again, how do we prevent it comin' back for another round?"

"Yeah, that's what I've been brainstorming. I think we have to find out what it's comin' back here for."

"Besides kidsicles?" Bobby gave him a dubious glare for that. "What?"

"Bad taste, Dean. Especially if you've seen the bodies. Such as they are."

He looked down, clearly acknowledging he was in the wrong. "Sorry." He took another gulp of his beer before continuing. "So how do we go about figuring out what it wants?"

"We have two avenues open to us. Investigation, and capture."

Dean nodded. "How do we find and capture such an old demon? Besides a shit ton of salt and a holy water moat?"

"Well, those would be great. But barring that, I'm afraid we're gonna hafta put our heads together and brainstorm some more."

Dean considered that a moment. "Okay, the world's doomed. Awesome."

Bobby smirked briefly, mainly because he'd already thought that. "C'mon, we're good. We'll figure out something."

"When he's up, we should get Sam in on this."

"Think he can take it?"

"He's smart, Bobby. Maybe he'll see something we can't."

He nodded, not surprised by this assessment. "By the way, between this, can I coerce you into helping me with the yard?"

Dean brightened at this. If he had a tail, it would have been wagging. "Rebuilding something?"

"Gotta storm comin' in, figure I'll have a glut of shithead drivers."

He grinned. "My favorite. There's nothing more satisfying than crushing a Kia into a cube."

Bobby chuckled. "That, and we hafta figure out what we're doing for your birthday."

"Strip club?"

"You've already been to strip clubs. And, I hate to tell you, kid, they're all fucking depressing."

Dean shrugged. "Yeah, but … boobs."

He shook his head. "We'll think of something not so depressing." The phone rang again, and this time Bobby was sure it was from the phone bank. But by the time he got there, two phones were ringing. He picked up the first, and pretended to be an FBI field officer for a moment, and then picked up the other line, which was simply his phone. "Yeah?"

Just from the sigh alone, he knew it was Warren once more. "He's struck again."

It was like a punch in the gut. "Already?"

"And on top of that, it wasn't even a kid this time. " Warren lowered his voice. "Reverend Robert Krothe. We just found him in his church, and he's been torn up like those kids, maybe even worse. As far as I can tell, it barely took a bite out of him. Mostly it just ripped him up like a paper doll."

Vivid imagery. And not really necessary, since Bobby already knew what this thing did to kids. But why would the demon change its M.O. after all this time? "Any symbols? Any sulfur?"

"Not so far. I'll try and include a few photos in the drop. We should be cleared out in a couple hours, if … you know."

"Got it."

By the time Bobby hung up, Dean was standing in the archway, still drinking his beer. "Feel like doing some breaking and entering investigating?"

Dean smiled. "Hell yeah."

In retrospect, it was a silly question.

* * *

Bobby didn't know much about Reverend Krothe. He was one of those born again types that he just couldn't trust. The more judgmental you were, the more Bobby assumed you were a self-righteous prick, because that's usually how it shook out. He ran a big mega church a few towns over, and he'd been in the news a couple years ago, but Bobby forgot why. Some searching turned up the answer pretty quickly.

He was in the news for two different reasons. One was over objections to his mega church's expansion, which threatened to eat up valuable local farmland (and ultimately did, paving over about two thirds of it for parking lots). The other was for a runaway from his "purity camp". A sixteen year old boy named Oliver Treadway supposedly took off from the place, and as far as Bobby knew, had never been found again. The "purity camp" was essentially a "pray the gay away" boot camp for teens with the misfortune to have overly religious, intolerant parents, who seemed to think their child's sexual orientation was somehow a threat to them. After the media circus, and Treadway's parents threatening to sue, the camp was shut down. Bobby had no idea if Krothe settled out of court with the Treadways or what, but he hoped Oliver was living a better life away from his asshole parents.

Krothe was in that weird position of having lots of followers, and yet being really hated, especially locally. He was seen as a tax dodger and a shyster, and Bobby felt that was probably an accurate assessment. But after the death of his wife a year ago – cancer – he'd kind of fallen in national popularity. Bobby hoped it was because he was genuinely grieving, but worried it had to do more with the Feds investigating his creative financing for his two yachts (in a land locked state!) and his sprawling buffalo ranch in Montana. It was really uncharitable for him to think maybe the demon was spot on in ripping this guy apart, but he thought it anyway.

Krothe was not murdered in his mega church, but his "home church", the one he first started preaching in decades ago. It was called Crossroads, and was only about eight miles from the yard. He and Dean scoped out the block first, making sure there were no obvious black and whites visible, then he let Dean out the next block over, to take the back way into the church and sneak in. He had faith in Dean's ability to pick those locks in his sleep. The mega church had fancy ass security; no such luxury for the little church in bumfuck nowhere.

Bobby put the suit back on, and got out appropriate ID, so if anyone caught him, he was a Fed looking into the case for … reasons. He'd have to make them up on the fly. He didn't know how he'd pass Dean off as an investigator, he looked way too young, but he'd think of something there too.

The cops had already cleared off, leaving behind crime scene tape and mot much else. Most of playing the part of Fed was acting like you belonged wherever you were. Once you got that down, the rest was gravy. If you believed in your own bullshit, everybody else did too.

Bobby smelled the mess before he pushed open the door and stepped inside the church. It was blood and shit, as well as another scent that was ineffably tied with death. It was a kind of putrescence, but Bobby had never been able to nail down what exactly it was. It only showed up when someone's gut was sliced open, though, so it narrowed the suspects down.

The church was full of polished wood and dark burgundy carpets that absorbed and hid the bloodstains very well, although not so well that Bobby couldn't see the oblong splashes and freckles of blood that seemed to extend from halfway down the aisle to what was the altar, and the first two rows of pews. Dean was already on the altar, although standing on a segment of clean floor, unmarred by blood or offal. "Something really tore him to pieces," he said, crouching down to look at the largest blood stain. He gestured to the wall behind him. "That's arterial spray."

It was. It almost reached to the ceiling. There was a genuine chalk outline of the body, which Bobby was sure no one did anymore (if in fact they ever did), but this town and cop shop was small enough to do it. And it let them know how Krothe was sprawled out, and which parts went where. Well, as far as arms and legs went. Some of the blobs were too anonymous and could have been anything. Hopefully there'd be more illuminating pictures shoved in his mailbox later. But it looked like one of his arms had been flung near the wall with the arterial spray, while the other was just beneath the front row pew. One of his legs made it to the aisle, while the other was in the second row pew on the left hand side, if he was interpreting the chalk marks correctly. "Hmm."

"What is it?" Dean asked, straightening up.

"Unless pictures of the body reveal something I'm not seeing here … it wasn't our child eating demon that did this."

"How do you know?"

"Look at the spread. This guy was torn limb from limb. The demon mutilated the kids, ate chunks of them, but he didn't pull their limbs off for fun."

"Could the M.O, have shifted slightly for an adult?"

Bobby shrugged. It was a good question, and he wished he had an answer for him. "Maybe, but why?"

Dean scratched his head as he looked around the church, at all its various stains and chalk marks. "Seems kinda personal, doesn't it?"

"The fact that he was drawn and quartered in his old home church? Hell yes."

"So did something go down between this guy and the demon?"

Now there was an idea. Now Bobby felt better about drawing Dean – and by extension, Sam – into this. Nobody could be born hunters, but they seemed as close as you could get to it. "You thinkin' deal gone bad?"

It was Dean's turn to shrug. "I dunno. But how did he go from small time evangelist to mega church asshole so fast?"

Bobby wanted to say "stupidity", but refrained. It was an excellent point. Could a so called man of God been suckered by a demon, or did he know full well the nature of the bargain he was cutting? Was it a cynical man's grab for wealth and power, regardless of where it came from, and how it might cost him? He wouldn't be the first short sighted idiot to fall for it, and not the last either. Why make an honest living when someone could just hand you everything on a silver platter? Just don't read the fine print. "If this is what the demon came back for, to collect payment on a deal, it should be on its way."

Dean nodded, putting his hands in his pockets. "Think we're that lucky?"

Nope, not even a little bit. But he hardly needed to tell him that. He was a Winchester, after all, and if it weren't for bad luck, they'd have no luck at all.


	3. Heading For The Harrows

_**3 – Heading For The Harrows**_

The throbbing in Sam's arm woke him up, letting him know he was probably due for another pain pill. Although at this rate, he felt like he was due about a couple dozen of them. It would have been so lovely if doing a good deed paid in some way, or at least didn't cost. But Sam knew if he didn't hurt and wasn't grumpy, that thought wouldn't have even occurred to him. You didn't become a hunter for praise. Not that he ever had much of a choice.

Grump, grump, grump. He was annoying himself, and he was really hungry as well as achy. Sam was also tired enough to also go back to sleep, but the pain wouldn't let him. He went downstairs, and was surprised to find it so quiet. But he found a note in the kitchen saying they went on a supply run, and he found a sandwich in the fridge wrapped up and waiting for him. He couldn't tell if Bobby or Dean made it for him, but it didn't matter. It was kind of nice to be thought about.

The peace was actually nice for a change. The cheap motels often had sounds of TVs bleeding through the walls, or people fighting. Or fucking. Yeah, that was the most embarrassing bit. Sometimes Sam was tempted to draw up cards he could hold out for women who were really over the top faking it, but that seemed both bitchy and creepy from a kid his age. But man, some women were terrible actresses. If you could hear better acting in porn, it was probably time to stop.

His arm was in a cast and a sling, so you'd think it wouldn't hurt that much to move it, but Sam quickly learned that wasn't the case. He was going to have to learn to do so many things left handed now, it seemed ridiculous. He was having a hard enough time mastering this sandwich. For some reason, this reminded of the time he watched Dean, back at that place they stayed in Anchorage for a while, working on his left side punching and stabbing techniques (shooting he had down). He looked so dorky and ridiculous for the longest time, he was hilarious to watch. Until he figured it out, and filled the heavy bag so full of holes sand was leaking everywhere. If Dean could master killing someone from the left, Sam could master everything else. Or so he hoped. At least no one was home to watch his first fumbling attempts to open a can with his left hand alone.

Luckily, he was done with the sandwich by the time the kitchen door opened, and Dean came in hauling a couple bags of grocery. "Hey dude, how you doing?"

"Fine," Sam lied, his arm still throbbing like an infected wound. And if that wasn't bad enough, there were other problems too. "It's starting to itch like crazy under the cast, though."

"There's an easy fix for that. Straighten out a coat hanger, and you can shove it under there and get them."

Of course Dean would have a way to deal with this. They'd both been in casts before. In fact, Sam wouldn't have been surprised if they had both been bruised on every single part of their body at least twice over by now. If ERs gave frequent flier miles, they'd have enough points to tour the world's hospitals twice over. "Great, I'll try that."

He heard Bobby come in the front door, but didn't see him right away. Dean just went straight to unpacking the groceries, and they'd been at Bobby's often enough that he knew exactly where everything went. Bobby's was more like home to them than any other place, ever. If Sam had ever been given the opportunity, he'd have just stayed with Bobby rather than go back on the road. (But leaving Dean alone with Dad? Was that fair?)

By the time Dean had everything put away, Bobby wandered into the kitchen, dressed in his fake "agent" suit, and looking at a manila folder. Whatever was in the folder must have been awful, as Bobby was pretty pale. "Is something up?" Sam wondered.

"Have you eaten yet?" Dean asked.

Although that seemed like a weird question, he nodded. And then Dean told him what was up. Sam was soon sorry he asked.

A demon that ate childen? And was back for round two? And may have collected on a deal with a preacher by ripping him to pieces? Christ. Maybe staying with Bobby was no better than traveling with Dad.

Bobby drifted over to Dean, and showed him what was in the folder. Dean lifted up one photo, and turned it upside down, squinting at it, before saying, "Is that his ..?" Dean suddenly paled, and put the photo back. "Man, that's nasty."

Sam hazarded a guess. "Crime scene photos?"

"Yeah." Dean made to give him the folder, but Bobby grabbed his arm.

"Should ya?"

Dean looked at Bobby like he was crazy. "We've seen worse."

Bobby seemed doubtful, but let go of Dean's arm, and Sam took the folder, bracing himself before he opened it. Yeah, it was pretty bad, but it was also remarkably abstract. These people had been mutilated so thoroughly, he could have been looking at a messed up butcher shop. When you weren't looking at obvious body parts, it was easy to depersonalize the images. He soon found what he figured was the photo Dean had looked at. It looked like the reverend's dick had not only been ripped off, but ripped in two. It was not that big, so halved, it was a little difficult to see that it was a dick and not a couple of cut off toes.

Sam finally set down the folder and closed it, worried that he was already inured to this level of violence. "This was personal."

Bobby cracked open a beer. "Yeah, we got that, kid."

"No, I mean, how is this collection on a deal? That kind of violence is more perfunctory, isn't it? Whoever did this took their time, and made sure not a piece of him wasn't mutilated. This was an act of hate, not collection."

Dean nodded, sitting down across from him. "Yeah, I was thinking that too. But that begs a bunch of questions."

"Like, why did the demon hate this guy?" Bobby said.

"If it even was the kid eating demon," Dean countered.

"Well, nothing human could have done this," Sam said, tapping the folder. "Not without a bulldozer or something."

"So are we dealing with two demons?" Bobby continued. "Or a demon and a monster?"

Dean slumped in his chair with a sigh. "Goddamn, does bad luck follow us, or do we have a gift for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

"We're like reverse Scooby-Doo," Sam said." Instead of looking for mysteries, mysteries look for us."

"I'm Shaggy," Dean called.

Sam frowned at him. "You're going to make me Scooby Doo, aren't you?"

Bobby chuckled. "You know, I can totally see that."

Sam shot him a glare, but honestly, it could have been worse. He could have been Fred.

* * *

Bobby did some more investigating into the preacher, while Sam researched demons and other people eating creatures, and Dean talked to some guy about finding a part for his GTO. Somebody had to handle the customers, and Dean loved this car crap.

The problem was, both he and Bobby had too many suspects. A lot of people hated Krothe and wanted him dead. A lot of things ate people, and only wendigos could be ruled out. (Because a wendigo would have had a much higher body count by now. They were driven monsters, not smart or subtle.)

Dean eventually came in, grinning like a fiend, with an impressive wad of cash in his hand. Apparently he had agreed to rebuild the guy's transmission, as well as replace the front bumper with a more make and model appropriate one. That was a ton of money, but the guy wanted it done right. To Dean, that was like a day and a half's work, tops. Bobby accused him of being a gearhead's dream, but affectionately so.

Dean offered to take them all out to dinner, and since they were making no headway, they figured what the hell. Might as well take advantage of Dean's generosity while it was on the table.

There weren't a lot of restaurants around here, but there was a roadhouse joint that functioned as both a bar and a decent place selling diner food. Sam probably wasn't legally allowed in the place, but Bobby knew the owner, who was happy to look the other way.

There was a pool table in the back, and after dinner Dean wandered that way. He wasn't going to hustle some poor bastard, was he? He had money, he didn't need to do it, but he knew it could be simply habit with Dean. He'd been hustling pool games since he was what, twelve? He seemed proud of his ability to shark anyone.

While Dean was gone, and Sam was picking over the remains of his fries, he asked Bobby, "Is there a type?"

Bobby's eyebrows furrowed. "Type of what?"

"Kid the demon targets? Was there any connecting factors between the victims?"

Bobby rolled his eyes. "I'd ask you to forget it for tonight, but you aren't gonna, are you?"

Sam shook his head. "I feel like there's something we're missing here. I can almost …"

Bobby raised an eyebrow. "Almost what?"

He shook his head. He didn't know if he dared explain it. But it was like a picture was almost forming in his head, he just needed one or two more pieces to put it all together. "Can't explain. But is there?"

Bobby sat back, thinking about it. "They were all between the ages of five and fifteen. Boys and girls. Mostly white, but not all." He shrugged. "The cops looked for connecting factors. I looked for connecting factors. But it seemed completely random."

Which was weird. But Sam wasn't completely sure what he was looking for when Dean came back to the table, followed by a stranger. He was a young man, probably Dean's age, so close in size and shape to Dean he could have been his brother. But his hair color was a pale light brown, almost blondish, and his eyes a startling blue. He was actually quite handsome, which was probably the most startling thing about him. He was wearing black jeans, a black leather jacket, and a Pink Floyd t-shirt. "Guys, this is Finn. He has something to say about Krothe."

"Hey," Finn said awkwardly, raising his hand. He looked at Dean nervously, and Dean just tipped his head, silently prodding him on. "Uh, umm, he said you were an investigator looking into Krothe's murder?" He said that directly to Bobby.

Bobby nodded, playing along. "You have some information?"

"Well … just that … he was responsible for a lot of bad shit. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the people at the camp came back for revenge."

Bobby shoved a chair out with his foot, a tacit invitation for Finn to sit down. "What do you mean by bad shit?"

Finn looked at Dean again nervously, but Dean gave him an "its okay" look. Sam found this kind of fascinating. Had Dean used his charm to coax this guy into confessing something? Wow. Dean usually only turned on the charm for women, but there was no reason it couldn't work on a guy. Finn sat, and Dean remained standing beside him, arms crossed over his chest. "My neighbor, Jeff?" Finn began. He shot a nervous look at Sam, like he didn't know why he was here, but focused on Bobby. "He got sent to the camp by his parents?" He said it like it was a question, even though it wasn't. "And he was there during the whole Oliver Treadway thing. He said the last time anyone saw Oliver, he was sent to discipline, and then he wasn't in his assigned area by nighttime curfew. No one said anything, but then the next morning, they came out with that whole runaway thing. But that couldn't have happened."

Bobby tilted his head. "Why not? What's discipline?"

Finn took a deep breath, as if this part was terrible. Just from the grim look on Dean's face, Sam was sure it was. "Discipline was this windowless box, in the back area of the camp. It was in the sun all day, and there's a lock on the outside of the door. It can only be opened from the outside. So he couldn't have escaped unless someone let him out."

Jesus. Sam winced, but Bobby looked pissed. His eyes almost glowed with rage. Adults hurting kids was just his end point, even if they were teenagers. "A fucking box? Like a Cool Hand Luke box? That's not legal. That's torture."

Finn shrugged. "According to Jeff, they tore down the discipline box that night, and in the morning, when they announced the escape, it was gone. When kids reported it, the staff said they were making it up. The cops chose to believe the staff."

Bobby's hand clenched into a fist, but he made himself relax it. "Tell me this didn't happen during the summer."

Finn both dipped his head and shrugged, a confused gesture, like he didn't want to tell him, but he had to. "It was. It was in August."

Holy shit. A windowless box in the sun in August? That was more than a sauna. That was an oven. Was whoever ran that camp such an idiot that they didn't know that? They must have. Why else was it a discipline box if they didn't know it became unbearably hot? Did they just not realize that there was a tiny window between torturous but survivable, and death? Were they complete morons. Or malicious morons? Well, it was a "pray the gay away" camp, so malicious idiots was probably the safe bet.

Bobby rubbed his eyes, clearly trying to rein in his anger. "Are you saying Oliver died, and Krothe covered it up?"

Finn shrugged with his hands this time. They still had some green pool cue chalk on them, explaining how Dean met this guy. "I dunno. But Jeff figured he was dead, yeah. He didn't know why they bought that bullshit story about him running away. If anyone actually investigated it like they should've, they'd have known the staff were all about covering their own asses. But it was, like, even his parents didn't care that much about what happened to Oliver, y'know?"

Bobby, Sam, and Dean all exchanged looks, keeping Finn out of it. If this was true – and they had no reason to doubt it – it told them exactly what had killed Krothe. One pissed off vengeful spirit. It could easily rip a man to pieces, with all the hate that was humanly possible.

But that still left the question why now? What had brought dead Oliver – assuming he was dead – back for vengeance after all this time?

It answered one question, but somehow had added a half a dozen more.


	4. The Quick and The Dead

_**4 – The Quick and The Dead**_

Finn was really helpful. Bobby got his number, and asked if he could have Jeff call him. Finn nervously said that Jeff and his family had moved out of state last year, but he'd try.

In the cat, they discussed their next move. "Okay, if this is a vengeful spirit, we can deal with it," Dean said. He was trying to look on the bright side. "Salt and burn. A milk run."

"Except, if he is indeed dead, where's his body?" Bobby countered. He still looked angry. Dean wondered what the story was behind Bobby's absolute hatred of adults who abused children in any respect. Dean hated it too, it was sick, but something about Bobby's anger felt … personal. But Dean knew of no way to ask that wasn't nosy or inappropriate, so he decided he was going to have to live with never knowing for sure. But he had his suspicions. It was Bobby's story to tell, and if he never wanted to, fine. Dean just hoped Bobby made whoever hurt him pay. "He's still on the missing persons list. No one thinks he's dead."

"Except some of the kids from the camp," Sam said.

"We need to talk to the staff members," Bobby said. His expression settled into grim but determined which was good. Anger with no purpose could mess you up. No one knew that better than Dean. "If Oliver was baked to death in that fucking box, they know. One of 'em should crack."

"Especially if they think a killer from the camp may be after them," Sam said. They both looked at him in surprise.

"You devious little shit," Dean said, slapping him on the back. He was proud of him.

"That's straight out of a horror movie," Bobby said. "So yeah, they'd probably buy that. Let's use it."

Back home, Bobby and Sam immersed themselves in studying up on Krothe's "purity camp" to see if they could dig up staff members, while Dean called Finn back, to ask if he knew any of their names. Finn seemed surprised by his call, and hesitated several times before he asked, "Can I admit something?"

"Sure," Dean said, hoping he wasn't going to say he made it all up. Dean had gone outside to find that '68 GTO bumper he saw in the yard before the snow that was supposed to come in tonight covered it up. It was better than digging it out later. His breath was already white vapor in the air, and while it was cold, Dean found it refreshingly crisp. For now. In about ten minutes he'd probably be freezing his balls off.

"It … umm … wasn't Jeff that was sent to the camp. It was me."

That made Dean stop in his tracks. They sent Finn to a gay conversion camp? He seemed like a normal guy. "What? Really? Why?"

He laughed breathlessly. "My parents were … are really religious, and they didn't feel I was manly enough or whatever."

"You seem perfectly manly to me." Dean realized that was a weird thing to say, but there was no taking it back now. "Why did you say were?"

"Oh. After the camp shut down, they said they didn't want me to come home unless I was cured. So I moved in with my great aunt. I haven't seen my parents since."

"Wow. That's cold." Dean had heard of parents like that, but it was still mind blowing to him. They'd just abandon their kids like that? Why did they have kids in the first place if they were going to kick them out the moment they weren't perfect?

"Tell me about it. They moved out of state three years ago, and never even told me. I'm not even sure where they moved to. Somewhere in the South, I think."

Dean was tempted to ask them their names, so he could track them down and tell them to their faces they were horrible parents and awful people. "Man, I'm sorry that happened to you."

"Don't be. I've had a while to get over it. But I can't tell you how happy I am that the Feds are finally looking into Oliver's case. I've been saving money, hoping to get up enough to hire a private investigator. I mean, even when it was happening, I couldn't believe the cops were just gonna take the staff's word for everything, and never take one thing we said seriously. I knew some of the cops were members of Krothe's church, but I never thought they'd just let him get swept under the rug, you know? People just don't fall off the face of the Earth."

Dean knew he shouldn't say anything, but he was dying to say that no, sometimes people did fall off the face of the Earth, into the mouths of monsters or demons. Still, this guy didn't need to know about that, and it was a little disheartening to know sometimes they just fell into the hands of humans who were no better than monsters.

Dean found the bumper he was looking for, and the timing was great, as the enjoyably brisk feeling had worn off, and his toes were numb inside his boots. "If I ask you if you remember the names of any staff members, could you tell me?"

"Yeah, of course. I wrote down all the names I could remember once I got back," he said, and Dean heard the sound of stuff shifting in the background, like Finn was going through a drawer. "I've been planning on hiring an investigator for a while. It's just, when my great aunt got sick, there were the hospital bills and all of that."

"I get you." More than once, Dean wondered how anyone survived without committing credit card fraud on the regular. It was a ridiculously expensive world. "If you give me a moment, I'll hand you over to my partner, and he can get all the info on the staff members"

Finn chuckled again, but this time it sounded more lighthearted. "There's no way you're a Fed. You're way too young."

"Rookie in training, but thanks for the compliment." He moved the bumper to the outside of the work shed, and left it there to return to the house. He could smell snow in the air.

"Seriously? You're unlike any cop I've ever met."

"It takes all kinds," Dean said, glad the guy couldn't see him, as he was struggling to keep a straight face. Finn was right, but he could never tell him he was.

Bobby's house seemed positively hot after being outside, but by the time he entered the living room, it was back to cozy. Dean covered the mouthpiece of his phone, and told Bobby, "Finn knows some of the staff members."

He nodded, and by the time Dean handed him the phone, Bobby had adopted his gruff Agent voice again.

Dean plopped down on the sofa beside Sam, who appeared to be reading one of Bobby's older, dustier books. "How's it going?"

"The staff search? It's good Finn has names, because we were thinking we might have to break into Krothe's office and search for files. The staff were kept to first names only, if they were mentioned at all."

"Huh. Well, Jeff wasn't the one at the camp, it was Finn."

"No shit."

Dean stared at Sam, but his nose was still firmly planted in the book. "You knew?"

Finally, Sam looked up. "Of course. When somebody says they have a friend – or, in this case, neighbor – and they come out with that many details, they mean themselves, they just don't want to admit it." He frowned at him a moment. "Did you really think there was a Jeff?"

"No, of course not." At Sam's unrelenting gaze, he shrugged. "He seemed really sincere."

Sam looked like he was going to say something snarky, but by that time, Bobby had hung up, and tossed Dean his phone. "Okay, got three full names to go on, and a handful of first names only. We'll start with the full first and see where that takes us."

Within ten minutes, they had an address. Carl Jackman lived one town over, but at least he was still in the state, and that was a place to start. They were searching for another one when Bobby got a call.

Dean and Sam ignored it at first, assuming it was just a hunter Bobby was pretending to be a supervisor for, but at his loud "What?", they both paid attention.

Bobby looked baffled when he hung up. "Uh, I don't know how we're gonna deal with this one."

"What?" Dean asked. Bobby usually had it together, so this was new.

"That was Warren," Bobby said, still looking concerned. "Apparently there's a violent apparition at the Gas and Sip two miles from here, and no one's sure how to handle it. There are cops on the scene who seem to think it's some kind of prank, even though a couple of them were thrown through a window. According to Warren, it looks like there's a hurricane inside the store. Nobody knows what to do."

"Another violent ghost?" Dean said. Two in the same town in less than a day? That was really weird.

"Did someone die in the store?" Sam asked.

Bobby nodded. "Warren said some clerk was killed in the store in the '80's, but he didn't know a name."

So they switched their investigation to that, and within fifteen minutes they learned that the clerk killed in the store during a robbery was Ryan Kulak, in 1983, and he was buried in Green Hill Cemetery. They got the gear and loaded up the cat. They told Sam he could stay, since his broken arm meant he wasn't going to be digging, but he didn't want to be left behind.

On the drive over, they discussed what this could possibly mean. "I have a psychic friend I can call," Bobby said. "Maybe she'll know what's going on."

"This is really bad," Sam said. He was becoming the master of the understatement. "Why would two long dead people suddenly become violent apparitions at the same time? What causes that?"

Bobby shrugged. "Nothing good."

"Do you think it could be an omen?" Sam continued.

Bobby shot Dean a glance before looking at Sam in the back seat. The glance seemed to say "are we sure he's a kid". ""An omen for what?"

"I don't know, that's why I was asking."

Bobby had no answer for him. Neither did Dean. It was something, and most likely something terrible. Once they got to the cemetery, Sam pulled him aside and asked quietly, "Is it us? Are we just cursed or something?"

Dean shrugged. "We're Winchesters, so … yeah, kinda."

Sam just gave him a look that suggested he wanted something comforting, and Dean had just disappointed him, but hey. If he didn't know it now, it would come as an awful shock later on.

He and Bobby dug up Ryan's grave, and he was basically bones and some leathery strips of flesh at this point. The smell wasn't great, but at least it was a cold night, and that kept it from being really putrid. Sam salted the remains and threw gasoline on it, so he felt like he was doing something, and Bobby tossed a book of lit matches into the hole. Roasting corpse never smelled great, but Dean tried to be as downwind of it as possible.

Bobby called his cop friend back, and confirmed everything had quieted down at the Gas and Sip. Apparently the cops were still working on the whole "prank" theory, and were looking for someone to blame. Dean wished them luck, because the guy that did it was already dead, and it was hard to top that as a method of punishment. The worst thing that could happen to him had already happened.

Before they left, Bobby put in a call to his psychic friend, Teri, making some attempt to figure out what the hell was going on. It sure would be nice to know.

But Dean was sure of one thing. Two angry ghosts were only the beginning.

* * *

Bobby had just started making his morning coffee when there was a knock at the kitchen door. Only people who wanted to avoid being seen meeting with him ever came to the back door, so he thought it might be Warren. To his surprise, it was Teri.

Teri was a twitchy woman, short but slim, and as nervous as a jackrabbit in cougar country. Bobby honestly didn't know if the psychic thing was the cause of her general anxiety, or if it was just her personality, but she always seemed so high strung he wanted to give her a Valium or something. Her frizzy brown hair was partially gathered under a brown watch cap, and she seemed swallowed up in a puffy blue parka about two sizes too large for her. He invited her in, but she didn't sit down, simply hovered near the door like she was preparing to bolt at the first loud noise.

"Were the readings that bad?" he asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee. She turned down his offer for one.

"You have those two boys staying with you, don't you?"

Of all the things he expected her to start with, he'd never have guessed that one. "Dean and Sam? Yeah. They're sleeping right now, if you're worried about them overhearing."

She scoffed, and rubbed her cheek nervously. "The spirits are … very agitated about them."

Teri was a genuine psychic, but she used Tarot cards and Ouija boards to talk to spirits on the other side of the veil. He knew a couple of psychics, and most of them did the same thing. "Why?"

"They kept repeating the same thing over and over again. One is marked by the divine, the other is marked by the demonic. I couldn't get them to tell me if this was literal or figurative. Take your pick. They're fated either way, and it's heavy."

"What?" Spirits could be weird, but they were dead, and you kind of had to expect that. But if he had to pick, Dean had a bit of the devil in him, and Sam was the sweetest kid. A born angel if there ever was one. "What does this have to do with any of what's goin' on?"

"Fated, Bobby. That's like … it's like a black hole of weird surrounding them. Things get pulled in. People especially. People die around them."

He raised his eyebrows at this, mainly because he wasn't sure what she was implying. "The kids aren't responsible for the angry ghosts, Teri."

"No, I know, but the thing causing it may be drawn to them. Fated. You should really … send them away or something. Distance yourself. Save yourself. I don't know how this ends, but … it can't be pretty."

He had to swallow the "fuck off" just bubbling up his throat, and it was difficult. If she hadn't been such a decent acquaintance over the years, he would have tossed her out on her bony ass. "I can take care of myself, Teri, thanks. Now what thing is causing the angry ghosts?"

"That's just it. I couldn't get anything that made any sense. Something hungry."

"Yeah, well, we got a cannibal demon runnin' around, so I figured that part out for myself."

She shook her head. "It's not just a physical hunger. It's … emotional, psychic. I'm getting the fuck out of town. I'm probably not coming back, either."

"Seriously?"

She nodded. "I think you should get out too. Whatever this is … it's big. And those … boys are going to act like a magnet for it."

Bobby shrugged, waiting for his coffee to cool. "Great. The sooner it shows up, the sooner I can plant it."

Her hazel eyes bugged out at him. "Are you insane? Bobby … this is bad. I'm not sure even you can handle it."

"I can. Can you give me anything useful about this thing we're facing?"

She rolled her eyes like he was being the difficult one. "Revenge."

He pondered that a moment. "What? Is it after revenge?"

She shrugged. "That's all I got. That word kept coming up over and over again."

Bobby considered that. So far, the two ghosts who had returned that they knew of – Oliver (?) and Ryan – were murder victims. You'd think they'd want revenge. "Does it feed off of revenge? Cause it? Does it want revenge?"

"I told you, I don't know." She put her hand on the door knob. "Look, I'm not trying to be a bitch, okay? But the boys shouldn't be here. Not now, not with you. "

He nodded, once again keeping the "fuck you" to himself. "They're my family."

"No they're not."

"Yes, they are."

She sighed heavily, shaking her head. Teri opened the door, letting a burst of cold air in. "You're a good guy, Bobby. And I'm afraid that's what gonna get you killed."

"Bye, Teri."

She paused half way out the door, and said, "The one marked by a demon. He'll know when it's coming. Maybe you can use that to your advantage."

Bobby watched her close the door, saying nothing. Marked by a demon? Neither Sam nor Dean was marked by a fucking demon, and he was pretty sure the divine didn't exist, or at least he'd never seen any proof of it. It was probably the spirits being jackasses. Just because you were dead and on the other side of the veil didn't mean you couldn't be a dick.

And while on the surface, her info seemed like less than nothing, the truth was there was something there. If this demon only brought back dead spirits that wanted revenge, they didn't have to worry about every goddamn person that ever died in this town, just the ones that were murdered. That would be a manageable list, unless you went all the way back to settler times, and then it would be a fucking horror show. But one disaster at a time.

If the demon did want revenge … he did exorcise it last time. Did that mean it wanted revenge against him?

Balls. Maybe she was right about getting Sam and Dean away from him after all.


	5. Howl

_**5 – Howl**_

Bobby called two other psychics by the time Dean got up, and he had a quick bite to eat before heading out to work on the GTO. Bobby told him nothing yet, feeling it was best to wait until he had some more solid data to act upon. Bobby did catch himself staring at Dean when he wasn't looking his way, searching for any sign that might be interpreted as a devil's mark. Bobby mentally chided himself for his stupidity.

The storm that was supposed to come in last night hadn't materialized. There was a light dusting of snow, but the deluge they were supposed to get stalled over Montana. Bobby decided that was probably a good thing. He checked on Dean once, to make sure he was okay, but he was happily up to his elbows in a transmission, tinny radio playing the local hard rock station. Bobby tried to remember the last time he'd seen him this happy and couldn't. He left him alone.

When Sam finally got up, he looked rough, like he hadn't slept well. He said he had some nightmares, but didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. For about the first year he was a hunter, Bobby had nightmares every other night. Some of this shit was so heavy it felt unbearable, until the day you woke up and suddenly it wasn't anymore. He didn't know how or why the switch off happened, it just did. It was a relief, but at the same time, you couldn't help but worry you were getting too jaded.

Dean came in for a drink, and to check on Sam, which Bobby suspected may have been his main reason. Again, he was acting like a caretaker, not a brother, but that was pretty much what he was. Dean then went upstairs to clean up and change into a Fed suit, as he and Bobby were paying Carl Jackman a visit. After Teri's visit, Bobby didn't feel great about leaving Sam alone, but Sam was happy to stay home and research. Bobby said his psychic friend had used the word revenge, and Sam was using that as a jumping off point. Bobby wished he was half as enthused about research as Sam was.

On the drive over, Bobby listened as Dean told him about the car he'd been working on, as this continued to make him happy. Bobby wanted him and Sam to hold on to whatever happiness they had for as long as possible. He had this feeling they didn't get much of it.

Carl was a rather mousy man in his late thirties, bald and slight and as forgettable as any background movie extra. He was even dressed in khaki and beige, to drive home his blandness. Bobby had a feeling he'd forget him the moment he walked out of his sight.

He lived alone in a small, neat house, which had so many displayed crucifixes he wondered if the local Catholic church had had a fire sale. Although Carl offered them coffee, which they both turned down, he kept eying Dean suspiciously, perhaps guessing he was way too young for the job.

Bobby soon distracted him by asking him questions about Oliver's disappearance, and watched as his posture tensed and lines appeared in his face. It was a painful topic, and Bobby knew if he hammered him, he'd break.

It took less than ten minutes. Dean mentioned the "killer" after people from the camp, and Bobby mentioned how the Treadway case was being reopened, Carl tried to stiff upper lip it for a few minutes, but he wasn't very good at it, and he inevitably cracked like a spun sugar hammer.

At first it was hard to tell what he was saying with all the sobbing, but when they got him to calm down somewhat, they realized he was talking about being horrified and heartbroken about what happened to Krothe. They had to steer him into talking about Treadway, but his story basically confirmed what Bobby had guessed happened. Treadway "overheated" in the box, and was dead when someone went to check on him. Carl claimed it wasn't him, and he didn't know who it was, but it was decided (again, he didn't know by who) that they should cover it up and claim he was a runaway, to try and save the program. Carl was clearly covering his own ass by claiming he didn't do any of this, and didn't know who did any of it. He didn't want to admit his own guilt, or the guilt of his friends, and yet the guilt was clearly gnawing at him regardless. Bobby decided to lean on him harder when all hell broke loose.

Their only hint was Carl shuddering, and then Dean grabbed Bobby's arm. When Bobby looked at him, he saw his breath turning to white clouds in the air. Oh shit.

Suddenly Carl was punted across the room, into and through a glass china hutch, and when Dean jumped to his feet, he was flung over the sofa and into the hallway. Bobby remained where he was, because he was pretty sure he had no iron on him, and he could see none in the living room. He had some in the trunk, of course, but hadn't brought it in with him. Balls.

Oliver Treadway materialized in front of him. He'd been an average sized teenager, very slight, with pale, shaggy hair and waifish eyes. This was still true, even though he was now translucent, and rage had twisted his delicate features into something more animalistic and savage. He stared at Bobby with his pained, angry eyes, and he felt a chill all the way to his toes. "Son, you need to get a hold of yourself," he said, aware he was tempting fate. But if something was driving the spirit, there was no reason the spirit couldn't flip the script. Unless he was too far gone.

Oliver seemed to stare through him, and raised his hand, when a shot rang out and he disappeared in a swirl of smoke. "Since when can ghosts roam free of their location?" Dean asked, ejecting the spent shells from his sawed off.

He'd brought in a gun with salt rounds under his coat? Bobby quietly thanked Dean's paranoia and John's training, whichever made that happen. "They can if they're attached to an object. Or, if I'm guessin' right, freed to do so by some vengeance quest."

"You okay?" Dean asked, reloading as he walked over to the shattered remains of the china hutch. Bobby had a sinking feeling by the amount of blood now visible on the floor, their interview with Carl was permanently over.

"I wasn't the one who got body checked into the hall."

Dean just shrugged, like getting tossed around by an angry ghost was a common occurrence, and like he currently didn't have a thin stream of blood dribbling from his hairline. "Sammy got it worse." He crouched down beside Carl, and Bobby knew what the verdict would be before Dean looked back at him and shook his head. It was faster and not as vicious as the first, but Oliver had crossed another name off his list.

Dean was just standing up when Oliver reappeared. He raised his gun, but it was flung out of his hands as he was thrown brutally up against the wall. "No!" Bobby shouted, wondering if he could reach the gun before Oliver could hurt him. But the second he took a step forward, he felt ice crawling up his leg, and a pressure like the air was turning solid around him.

Dean looked like he was trying to struggle, but he was pinned as fast as a butterfly to a mounting board as Oliver drifted closer. "You don't want to do this," he said, sounding like it was hard for him to breathe. "What would Finn say?"

Oliver stilled very suddenly. Holy shit, had he reached him? Dean saw his reaction, and pressed on. "He's looking for you, you know. Help us find you. We'll bring you to Finn. We just need to know where your body is. They'll pay, Oliver, I promise. Just tell us where you are."

The ghost was motionless for several seconds, and then simply disappeared. Dean exhaled, finally released from the ghost's grasp. "You reached him," Bobby said, amazed. "How did you know that would work?"

Dean shook his head. "I didn't. I just had no other options."

Bobby rubbed his eyes, relieved that Dean could think that fast under attack. It also gave him an idea. "I think I know how we can get Oliver to shut his vengeance quest down."

"Really?"

"But it's gonna require a major charm offensive on your part. Think you can handle it?"

Dean looked at him, wariness in his eyes, but Bobby already knew it was a stupid question. Yes, he could. He was starting to think these boys were up for anything.

* * *

Sam didn't understand what that nightmare could have meant. But holy shit, was it bad.

He didn't remember a lot about it, except for two things. A ring of stones … maybe, and a pair of orange eyes. Orange like smoldering charcoal briquettes at the bottom of a barbecue grill, angry and inhuman. And as Sam saw those eyes emerge from the dark, he was dead sure they saw him at the exact same time.

But it was just a nightmare, right? No way was that a thing that actually happened. Yet he still had a queasy stomach, and a really bad feeling about all of this. Like that demon, whatever it was, knew he was here. He spent most of the morning telling himself it was just a nightmare, and everything was fine. He was fine.

So why didn't he believe it?

Sam couldn't find any references to orange eyed demons, but by the time Bobby and Dean had come back, he had found something else.

He almost forgot when he saw how glum Bobby looked, and the dried blood on Dean's face. "What happened?"

"Oliver showed up and killed Carl," Bobby said.

Sam wished he was surprised, but for some reason, he wasn't. "He's not tethered to the church?"

Bobby shook his head. "I think he's been released by the demon to get vengeance on all who've wronged him. It must feed off the spilled blood or deaths caused by the spirits."

"That might track with what I've found," he said, and showed Bobby what he'd uncovered in one of his old books. It called itself a "bestiary", but it mostly concerned itself with types of demons. "There's a demon of vengeance known as Alastor. He's sometimes also called Hell's executioner."

"You are fucking kidding me," Bobby said, taking the book from him to look for himself.

"I wish I was. He's apparently known for his cruelty, and for making children pay for the sins of the father. So I think I have the connection to the victims you couldn't find before. In all cases, the fathers probably did something terrible, known or unknown, and Alastor got his pound of flesh for it from their kids."

"Son of a bitch," Bobby said, reading the page he'd found on Alastor.

"Why would Hell's executioner be topside?" Dean wondered. He got a wet paper towel to wipe the blood off his face. Sam almost asked what happened, but decided he probably tried to get between Oliver and his victim. You never wanted to cross an angry ghost, as the cast on Sam's arm reminded him.

Sam shook his head. "Can't tell you that."

"Teri wasn't kidding," Bobby said, giving Sam back the book. "This asshole's fifty pounds of trouble in a ten pound sack."

"Any ideas on how we ice the bastard?" Dean wondered. Bobby looked to Sam, who shook his head. "Damn it," Dean said, collapsing onto the sofa.

Sam looked to Bobby. "You exorcised it before, right? We can do it again. We just have to figure out what his ultimate end game is to keep him from coming back."

"Yeah, kiddo, that's all well and good, but what the fuck does he want? We don't even have a clue on that front."

Sam told himself he wasn't going to ask, but damn it, he had to know. "Did he have orange eyes? Alastor?"

Bobby had to think about it a moment. "I guess he did, yeah. Why? That in the book?"

"One of 'em, yeah," Sam lied. Goddamn it! How could he have dreamed of Alastor? He didn't even know it existed until he found him in the bestiary.

(Right?)

This was crazy. He wasn't psychic. Sam wasn't sure what the hell was happening to him, but he knew that for sure. He had this sinking feeling that it was all bad, whatever it was, but he didn't feel like he had the brain space to devote to this right now.

Sam was wondering if he should mention this after all when Bobby's phone rang. He picked it up casually. "Yeah?" He then sat forward, instantly tense. "What? Paul? I can't –" Bobby then cringed, as if he heard a loud noise, and dropped the phone on his desk.

Dean stood, knowing something was wrong. "What is it?"

"It was Warren. He said he wasn't alone, someone had come for him, and then there was a burst of electrical interference before he was cut off."

"Electrical interference?" Sam asked, exchanging a concerned look with Dean. "Could be ghost or demon."

Bobby nodded. "He was callin' from home. Maybe we should pay him a visit."

"I'll get the extra salt rounds," Dean said, leaving the room like a man on a mission.

Sam decided to keep the stuff about his psychic dreams to himself. They had bigger shit to deal with right now.


	6. Send More Cops

_**6 – Send More Cops  
**_

Sam stayed behind to research while he and Bobby got back in the car and headed over to Warren's place. They'd hardly been gone five minutes when Sam called. "Okay, Warren killed a man named Clayton Anders in the line of duty back in '86. If he's being attacked by a ghost, it'd probably be that guy."

"Any idea on where the guy's planted?" Dean asked. At Bobby's surprised look, he covered the mouthpiece, and said, "Sam's a researching machine."

"Yeah, I'm getting that."

After a couple of moments, he said, "Calvary cemetery."

Dean repeated that to Bobby, and he nodded. "On the way. I'll drop you off."

Dean wasn't crazy about that, as that meant he was going to be digging up a grave all on his own again, but the guy was Bobby's friend, and if he could help him, he had to try.

It was a quick drill. Bobby pulled over outside the cemetery gates, and Dean hastily grabbed a shovel and a bag containing lighter fluid and salt before slamming the trunk and watching him drive off. He hoped he made it in time.

Considering it was light out, Dean knew he was risking trouble for this, but the cemetery didn't just look abandoned, it looked dead. It was easy to guess this was where the poor and disreputable were buried. They generally looked as if they'd been indifferently cared for or poorly tended.

Since this seemed like it was going to be a walk, Dean dug out his phone and called Finn, asking if he'd meet him at the Roadhouse tonight. Luckily, Finn agreed. This was all part of Bobby's plan to at least make Oliver break the cycle of violence, but what about the other ghosts? If they had to do this one at a time, the whole town would be dead in about a week. Dean still wasn't sure how best to do it, but he liked to think he did his best work on the fly, so he probably shouldn't think about it too much.

Finally he found Clayton's grave and got to work digging, wondering how the hell they were going to deal with Alastor. Maybe it was high past time he called their Dad.

* * *

With Dean out of the car, Bobby felt a little better driving on icy roads with reckless speeds. It also occurred to him he had no real plan of attack if it was Alastor coming after Paul.

Oh, he had the usuals – holy water, an exorcism spell, salt – and while the fact that Alastor could be exorcised was heartening, it wasn't going to do much good if he popped right back. On the plus side, maybe it wasn't a bad thing the boys were with him, because while he knew they were good hunters, they were really kicking some serious ass here. Then again, John really threw them in the deep end. They were either going to drown or swim, and lucky for them, they were natural swimmers. He was starting to think they were better than John in more ways than one.

He skidded to a stop in front of Warren's house, which had an iced over driveway, and was set back from the road in a little rural patch of land. Bobby headed for the front door with a shotgun full of rock salt, and a pack on his back containing enough salt and holy water to purify the whole house, and possibly a little beside it. But it was so quiet, all he could hear was his own footsteps, and he knew that was a hilariously bad sign.

The front door was ajar. Hilarious had just turned tragic.

"Paul?" he asked, pushing the door the rest of the way open with the barrel of his gun.

The quiet was eerie, and the floorboards creaked like they were complaining, but that was all he heard in the entire house. Bobby already knew what had happened. There was an energy in a living house that was hard to explain, but existed all the same. And he was getting no sense of that here.

He found him in the kitchen, sprawled beside his overturned kitchen table, his service revolver still in his outstretched right hand. It looked like Paul's throat had been ripped out. His blood painted the left side wall, and still dripped off the edges of the counter top. Bobby saw a shimmer out of the corner of his eye, and turned and fired the shotgun, causing the ghost of Anders to disappear in a scatter of rock salt. "Bastard." On the one hand, he was relieved it was a vengeful spirit and not Alastor. On the other hand, he hadn't been in time to save him. Another friend dead. How many friends and loved ones had he buried exactly? He always hoped there was a limit, a point at which it would stop, but he knew there simply wasn't. The dying would stop when he was too dead to notice.

He swung the rifle over his shoulder, and pulled out his iron bar, as it would feel more satisfying to hit the asshole next time he showed up. Bobby started to leave the house, but Clayton met him in the hallway. Briefly, as Bobby was ready for him, and swung the iron bar, cutting him into a harmless burst of fog. "This ends one way," Bobby said, not really caring if he reached Anders or not. "You're dead twice over, asshole. You just don't know it yet."

The front door slammed shut, and Anders materialized in front of Bobby, snarling like a rabid dog. Bobby stood there, waiting for him to make his move, when Anders began lighting up. He seemed to look around, as if not sure what was happening, and went up like flash paper. "See? Dead twice over." It was just a shame Anders was no longer around to hear that.

* * *

While waiting for Dean and Bobby to return, Sam made himself not think about anything, just get busy salting up windows and doorways. Doing something at least made him feel useful.

Not that he missed digging up graves. He was happy to leave that to Dean. He didn't miss the scent of roasting corpses either, which he was pretty sure was burned into his brain. Why did he know it? He'd have given anything not to.

Sam knew he should talk to someone about the occasional weird premonition (?) dreams he got. Or the fact that he felt like a demon had somehow saw him at the same time that he somehow saw it in a dream. But there was something about saying it aloud that made it real, permanent. If he didn't say it, he felt like he could live in a comfortable denial. If he said it, he might have to deal with it. He might have to acknowledge that there was something different about him. He didn't want to be different. He wanted a normal life where no one salted windows or dug up graves, or tried to figure out some way to kill a demon known as Hell's executioner. Why was being normal such a tall order?

Sam was upstairs, salting the windows there (just in case), when the pain in his head started. At first he thought it was a weird headache, announcing itself in a strange way, but then the pain spiked, like someone was stabbing his voodoo doll with a knitting needle. He dropped the canister of salt and grabbed his head, and suddenly saw something, in his mind's eye: a knife.

Not just any knife. It had a curved blade, almost like a sickle, except it was too small for that. It had carvings on it, and the blade itself looked like it had some decorative details on it.

As soon as he saw the image, it vanished, along with the worst of the pain, which still sent ripples throughout his body. What the motherfucking hell …

But Sam just knew, like he got a note with the vision and the pain. That was what Alastor was after. Fuck, how did he know that?

He quickly found a notebook and sketched out what he saw, but he wasn't a very good artist, and couldn't quite get it right, so he noted a few key details. He had some Latin words roaming around his head too: devoveo smila. Curse knife? Sacrifice knife? He was pretty sure he was missing some words, but that probably got the point across. No pun intended.

Once he was finished salting windows, he returned to Bobby's bookshelves and started looking for anything even remotely similar. He found several that seemed like they could be good candidates, but just as Sam was despairing over ever finding it – could he be sure it wasn't just a hallucination or something? Maybe he was finally losing his mind – he found an illustration of it.

It was called a "mythical weapon", as whoever wrote this said there was no proof it actually existed. But supposedly it was the "blade of damnation", as anyone killed with it went straight to Hell. No matter who, no matter why, their soul was on a rocket sled to the fiery deep if the knife took their lives. Supposedly the knife had ties to both Alastor and a demon called Azazel, but the writer said the connection was "unconfirmed". The last documentation for the knife put it in Pompeii at the time of the volcanic eruption.

If that was true, how was it here now? And why? Who had it? Whoever it was would be in serious danger from Alastor. It wasn't hard to guess he wanted it back.

Just from the long faces when Bobby and Dean came in, Sam was able to guess, "Not in time?"

Bobby shook his head and went into the kitchen for a beer, while Dean sat on the arm of a chair. "Nope. But there's one more vengeful spirit out of the picture, if that's anything."

Sam shrugged. "It could only help."

Dean nodded at the book in Sam's hands. "Find something?"

"Maybe what Alastor's looking for." He gave the book to Dean as Bobby came out of the kitchen, and joined him in looking at the data on the blade of damnation. "Holy fuck," Dean exclaimed.

"This is … not good," Bobby said, putting his beer can down. "I know some dealers in supernatural artifacts. I'll start calling, see if anyone's had something like this cross their path."

"If I'm right, it's in town or it's close," Sam said, wishing he didn't believe this with every fiber of his being. Why did he believe this? "That's why Alastor's here."

Bobby nodded, still grim faced as he picked up his phone. Dean gave Sam back the book, and whispered, "Good job, dude. How do you always find this shit?"

"It's not like I can do much else," he replied, lifting his broken arm for emphasis. But that wasn't actually an answer at all. He was dying to tell Dean, "Psychic vision or something," but of course he didn't. Couldn't. He didn't know what was happening to him, and he couldn't expect Dean to know either.

But Sam really wanted it to stop. Whatever the fuck it was.

* * *

Bobby's search for the blade of damnation turned up a big bunch of nothing, although he was waiting for a guy named Bas to get back to him when Dean left for the Roadhouse.

Had Sam seemed a bit squirrelly though? He thought he had, but he supposed being on the bench might be getting to him, especially with something as big and nasty as Alastor and a blade of damnation running around. It wasn't easy to be out of it while everything was hitting the fan. But look at everything he'd found! He was contributing, probably more than Dean was. So far all he'd done was dig up graves and salt and burn a couple corpses. And make a brief connection with Oliver.

Which was why he was here, instead of doing research at home. Bobby figured if just mentioning Finn's name could get through to Oliver, then Finn himself should have the biggest impact. But getting him on board with this was the problem.

Dean went in and flashed his fake ID at the bald Latino bartender, who eyed him skeptically while still serving him a beer. Hey, he was close enough to legal it was just a formality now.

Finn showed up on time, wearing some cologne that smelled pretty good. Normally Dean didn't go for cologne, but whatever he had on was nice. Still, Dean didn't see why he'd ever wear cologne if there was a good chance he was just going to smell like gunpowder or ectoplasm by the end of the night.

They got a quiet table, away from everyone else, and Dean just decided to dive in. "Okay, Finn, I'm gonna tell you some stuff, and you're gonna think it's all insane. But I want you to hear me out before you storm off, okay?"

Finn tilted his head and eyed him suspiciously. "Okay."

Dean then told him the truth: he was not a Fed, he was a monster hunter, and the vengeful spirit of Oliver had killed Krothe and Jackman both. When Oliver killed Jackman, he got a reaction from Oliver simply by mentioning Finn's name, and they needed his help to reach Oliver and talk him out of his killing spree before it went any farther. Also, they thought Finn might be able to get Oliver to tell him where his body was buried.

Finn listened, and Dean watched as all the disbelief just rippled across his face, and by the time Dean was done, something like anger had settled in his eyes. "You're fucking crazy," Finn said.

Dean shook his head. "No, I'm really not. I know this is a lot to dump on your head –"

"You are insane," Finn repeated. "You need professional help." He started to stand, but Dean grabbed his arm.

"Oliver needs your help, Finn. We can find his body, but we need your help."

Finn yanked his arm away and stood up, scowling. "Don't you dare talk about him like you knew him, and like this isn't some delusion on your part." He shook his head. "It just fucking figures. There's finally a cute guy in this burg who asks me out on a date, and he's a total nutjob."

"I know it's hard to believe, I really – wait. Did you think I asked you out?" That honestly caught Dean off guard. Was that why he was wearing such nice cologne?

"This isn't for one of those dumb ass reality shows, is it?" Finn continued, ignoring his question. "'Cause if it is, I don't consent to be on camera, and fuck you."

"It's not," Dean said, standing so he could be at eye level with the guy. They could straighten out (ha!) the date thing later. Right now, he needed to know he was being honest with him. "Those shows are jokes anyway. They're all charlatans. They'd shit their pants and die if they actually encountered a real ghost."

Finn stared at him with narrowed eyes before shaking his head. "I actually thought you were gonna help me."

"I am. We are. We just need your help in return."

Finn turned away, and Dean made to stop him, but that's when there was a loud crash from the kitchen, and a high pitched scream. Dean couldn't help but move towards the kitchen, when a waitress came running out like she was being chased by a werewolf, and almost smacked into him. Dean caught her by the shoulders, and said, "Whoa. What's going on?"

She pulled out of his grip and looked back at the kitchen, afraid something was still after her. There wasn't, yet, but the sounds of stuff falling continued. "There's a … I don't know what it is … a ghost? But ghosts don't …"

Shit! Dean headed towards the kitchen, and shouted, "Out! Everybody out!" Since nobody moved, he added, "Fire!" People started moving.

He took one step inside the kitchen before he was forced to duck an incoming frying pan. It hit the door and went out into the bar area. It looked like nearly everyone in the kitchen had evacuated, save for the cook, who was backed up against an industrial freezer by a translucent figure.

It looked like a teenage girl with long hair, dressed in a short skirt and a leather jacket. A little '80's Madonna look, if he was right. Around her was a small tornado of cutlery and shattered plates.

"-sorry," the cook was saying. "It was an accident! I didn't mean to –"

She let out an angry scream, and more dishware shattered against the wall and the freezer, making him turn his head away. The cook was already bleeding from a half dozen glass cuts.

Dean looked around for something he could use, since he'd probably hit the cook with some of the salt rounds from this angle, and saw what looked like a cast iron pan on the floor. Cast iron was as good as iron, right? He grabbed it, hoping the ghost didn't notice him, and then sprang up, swinging it. It cut through the girl and made her disappear in a swirl of smoke.

The cook was released, and stumbled forward, as all the cutlery and shattered glass hit the floor. "Who did you kill?" Dean asked.

The cook looked up at him, startled. "No one! What –"

"You killed that girl," Dean said, gesturing with the pan. It did occur to him it had a good, solid weight, and one casual swing could shatter this asshole's jaw like an icicle. "You tell me now what happened, or I let her have you." He didn't know how serious he was about that threat. But if he murdered a girl, Dean could hardly let him walk scot-free.

Fear and tears sprung from his eyes, and the cook wiped them away with the back of his hand. "I was a teenager, okay? I was driving drunk, and … I didn't mean to hurt anybody, okay? 'Specially not Annie. I'd never do that. It was stupid, I –"

"Goddamn right it was stupid," Dean said, swinging the pan at a shimmer in the air. He got her before she fully reformed, but he couldn't be that fast all the time. He considered his options. He thought about telling the cook to get out of here, but Annie would just follow him, and he'd probably be dead inside of five minutes. "Where's the salt?"

The cook stared at him, baffled. "What?"

"Salt. I need salt."

"Behind you, third cupboard on the right."

Dean turned and went there, and only when he was getting the salt out of the cupboard did he see the kitchen door was open, and someone was standing inside the doorway. It was Finn, his jaw still unhinged. "What the fucking hell was that?" he finally asked.

"Ghost. I told you, there's a demon raising vengeful ghosts," Dean said. When he stood, he tossed Finn the pan, which he barely caught. "If she starts forming again, hit her with that."

Finn still looked stunned. "Will it hurt her?"

"Of course not. She's dead, she's beyond pain now." That was probably the only good part about being dead. Dean poured a wide circle of salt in the center of the kitchen, then grabbed the cook and walked him to the center. "You stay here, and no matter what, don't leave the circle."

The cook was bleeding from several shallow cuts, and looked like he was continuing to grapple with shock. Dean had to shake him to get his attention. "Did you hear me? No matter what, don't leave the circle or smudge it. She can't touch you inside the salt. She can still throw stuff at you, so maybe duck." He put the salt canister in the cook's hands. "You can throw salt at her if she gets too close. It'll probably only disrupt her for a moment, but at least she'll back off."

The cook looked down at the salt like he'd never seen before. "Who – who are you?"

"Ghostbuster. Now what's her name, and where's she buried?"

The cook was staring to get a thousand yard stare, even as he looked at Dean. "What?"

"Her name. What's Annie's full name? And where is she buried? Do you know?"

The cook blinked, finally processing his words. "Anna Marie Margolis. She's buried in the graveyard at Saint Anthony's."

Was there a Saint Anthony's around here? Dean didn't know the church and graveyard situation that well, but he didn't think so. "Where's that?"

"Over in Horton."

Horton. Next town over. Shit. Dean glanced at Finn, who was holding the pan and looking at everything as though it might come alive and bite him."You wouldn't happen to know where that is, do you?"

Finn thought about it a second. "Saint Anthony's? Yeah. My sister was married there."

Oh great, he had a sister who abandoned him too. His story just got sadder. "Up for a road trip?"

Finn stared at him like he was the craziest thing he'd ever seen. At least this time Dean felt it was warranted.


	7. Goodbye Sober Day

_**7 – Goodbye Sober Day**_

Dean told Finn to stay in the car, but he refused. Dean was trying to spare him the particulars, especially the illegal bits, but he was being a stubborn asshole. Not that Dean completely blamed him, as he was still struggling with all this. He hadn't known ghosts were a thing that existed until a half hour ago. He was still trying to grasp it. "What other monsters are real?" Finn asked, trailing Dean as he made his way through the cemetery.

"A lot of them."

"Zombies?"

"Yeah."

"Werewolves?"

"Yeah."

"Vampires?"

"Yeah."

"Mummies?"

Dean actually had to think about that a moment. "I think there have been cases, but they're basically zombies with bandages."

Finn stared at him, still trying hard to believe this. "What about Frankensteins? Are there Frankensteins?"

"If you mean mad scientists, probably. As for patchwork dead guys, I haven't come across one. Yet. Still could happen."

"Bigfoot?"

"Oh hell no."

"Chupacabras?"

"Yep."

"Seriously?"

"Yep." Dean's flashlight picked out the headstone of Anna Marie Margolis. "You may want to go back to the car now."

Finn glanced at the shovel in his other hand, and already guessed what he was going to do. "That's not only illegal, that's fucked up. Grave desecration?"

Dean shrugged. "I told you, this is the only way to put a ghost to rest."

"Yeah, but …" he made some impenetrable hand gestures, and finally settled on, "It's wrong. It's so super wrong."

Dean had a sudden sense of déjà vu. Sammy had said something like this when he first accompanied Dean on a salt and burn run. It took a few times before Sam got over the whole corpse desecration thing. Dean shrugged, and told him the same thing he told Sam. "Sometimes you gotta do a little bad to do a lotta good."

Finn's look was flat. "And that's how you rationalize it to yourself?"

He nodded. "Pretty much." Dean was busy digging by the time Finn actually found his voice again.

"Oh my God. You are so scary I don't know what to do."

"Either help or go back to the car."

He just saw Finn nod out of the corner of his eye, and start walking back through the cemetery. Although he wished he had help digging, that was probably for the best.

Once he got the fire going, he called Bobby. On the way to Saint Anthony's, he'd called him and told him about the ghost at the Roadhouse, because he didn't trust the cook to last on his own. "She gone?"

"Yeah," Bobby confirmed. "Just went up. The cook's a wreck, but otherwise fine. Got Finn on board with the plan?"

"Not sure yet. Give me a couple more minutes. How goes the blade of damnation search?"

Bobby made a negative noise. "About the same. See you at home."

Maybe Sam could pull another miracle out of his books. They could use it right about now.

Back at the car, Finn was sitting in the passenger seat, looking anxious as hell. "So are you going to help us reach Oliver?"

Finn frowned, looking out at the cemetery. The glow of the fire from Annie's grave was still visible. "Is that what you're gonna do to him? Burn him?"

Dean wondered if he should lie to him or not, but figured he'd probably lied to him enough. If he expected him to get on board with this, he'd have to try honesty for a change. "Most likely. Unless you can reach him and talk him off the ledge. I don't know how doable that is. The demon is probably influencing him in some way."

Finn put his head in his hands. "This is fucking crazy. I can't believe how fucking crazy all of this is." He sat up, as if suddenly remembering something. "Is there a God?"

Dean shrugged. "No idea. But I don't think so."

Finn sighed. "Good. I'd kinda hate for my parents to be right about anything."

Dean started the car. "Your parents can't be right about anything. They'd be wrong if they said it was wet on a rainy day. You know why? 'Cause they're complete assholes."

Finn gave him a faint smile. "As scary as you are, it's really too bad you're straight."

Dean took that as a compliment, and smiled back at him.

* * *

Bobby knew he needed more sleep, but his brain just wasn't letting him tonight. Despite the fact that it was five in the goddamn morning, and the sun didn't seem to be out yet, Bobby got up to brainstorm.

Outside, the big storm still hadn't arrived yet, although there was a few inches of new snow out there, making his yard look almost pretty since it covered most of the actual junk.

The blade of damnation would be a huge item in the underground artifacts market, which was why it was bothering him that no one had heard of it. Even someone trying to keep it for themselves would find it difficult to squash the rumors. Not all artifact dealers worked with the tangible; a lot of them used Ouija boards, psychics, things of that ilk. You could work hard to hide something, but in this business, it was pretty much impossible.

Unless … the item was warded. Someone had hidden it, so well that even spirits – and demons? – couldn't find it. Bobby could do that. Hell, he'd done it. He had stuff hidden in his basement in warded boxes. He'd made curse boxes for John and a few other hunters that contained insanely dangerous stuff.

Bobby suddenly wondered if he was working against himself here.

It would have to be someone in the area he'd made a containment box for. How many hunters were in the general area? If he expanded the radius to a sixty mile area, there was nine (not counting him or the boys), but he'd only made boxes for three of them. Well, four, if you counted Phil, but he was dead. So he'd have to check in with Kathleen, Jason, and Raina, see what they had.

It was early, but he still got calling. He got Raina's machine, but Kathleen was up already. Bobby concocted a story about a rich buyer looking for a certain knife, hoping to capitalize on the very real need for money. No one became a hunter for the cash. Most people became hunters because they were half mad with grief. It wasn't a choice made by people in their right minds.

Kathleen didn't have anything like it, and he was fairly certain she wasn't lying. She was a straight shooter. Jason was a grumpy ass bastard, as he hated being woken up, but he had nothing like the blade either. Damn it. Bobby felt he was really onto something there.

Wait. Phil.

Phil was a decent hunter who'd died of liver disease five months ago, after a long battle with it. He hadn't been an active hunter for over a year, and you couldn't blame him for that. It was had to hunt when you were sick all the time. Bobby had made him a couple of boxes, and was kind of shocked when he went by his place to help his daughter pack up some of his things, and Bobby hadn't seen a single thing related to his hunting occupation. He probably hid it from his family, or that's what Bobby thought.

But Phil was kind of … well, tactfully, Bobby would have called him kooky. Honestly, he was a piece of bread short of a sandwich. The last year or so of his life, he got big into "prepping", he was sure the apocalypse was going to happen and soon, and he wanted to be "ready" for it. Which was absurd to Bobby, because an apocalypse was an apocalypse. That was like saying, "When the Earth explodes, I'll be ready!" Who the fuck would survive a planetary explosion? Humanity wouldn't survive an apocalypse if it did happen, and he was crazy to think otherwise.

What had his daughter said? He'd taken to burying stuff on his property to hide it. She found a buried coffee can full of silver coins near the back deck. What if Phil put the knife in one of the warded boxes, and buried it on his land? The demon wouldn't be able to find it, back when it came the first time, or now. The only person who knew the knife's true location was dead, and the demon couldn't even bring him back in ghost form, because he died of illness, not violence.

"Son of a bitch," Bobby said aloud. Phil owned two acres. Two acres! He could have buried it anywhere. Bobby wondered if it was too early to rent an earth mover.

The phone rang while he was looking up numbers, and much to his shock, it was John Winchester. "You finally on your way up?" Bobby asked.

"Not yet," John said. He sounded tense. "Dean called me last night. He said there's a demon named Alastor running around?"

"Yeah, resurrecting angry ghosts like crazy, occasionally stopping to chow down on some kids."

"Bobby, Sam and Dean can't be there. Tell Dean I'm ordering him to take his brother to Coldwater. He'll know what it means."

"Ordering him? He's your son, not your soldier," Bobby replied, hoping John could hear his scowl down the phone line.

"Yeah, he's my son, not yours."

"I get wanting them out of danger, I do, but these kids … holy shit. Sam has found things it would take me days to find, and Dean's been single handedly putting down angry spirits left and right. I'm startin' to worry they're better at this than me."

John huffed a sigh. "Sam can't be around any demons, especially not ones like Alastor. Dean needs to take him and leave now. I don't ask you for a lot, Bobby, but I'm asking you for this now."

Bobby chewed over these statements, trying to see what he wasn't telling him. Because there was a lot dropping between the lines. "Sam and not Dean? Why are you worried more about Sam?"

"He's injured, isn't he? He's not in the best condition to fight."

That was a great answer. So why didn't Bobby buy it? He remembered Dean complaining about all the secrets his Dad had. "Sam isn't concerned about it."

"He wouldn't be. But he should be. He's just a kid."

"John, what aren't you telling me?"

He paused for what seemed like an uncomfortable amount of time. "Bobby, I'm telling you my kids can't be there. A demon like Alastor will eat them alive, possibly literally. They need to be out of there tonight."

Bobby weighed all this in his head, everything that John was dancing around, the fact that he still wasn't on his way to collect his sons despite one being injured, and Teri's word came back to him: fated. "You know," Bobby finally said. "You know your boys are fated, and you're not telling them."

"What are you talking about?"

"You can lie to them, but don't even try and lie to me. I'll hang up on your lame ass."

"Look, I don't know what you're talking about, Bobby, I really don't."

Bobby did what he threatened to do. He hung up, and went back to flipping through the Yellow Pages for an equipment rental place. The phone rang less than a minute later. "Don't you ever hang up on me again," John snapped.

"Stop lyin' to me."

"I am not –" he paused, for a shorter amount this time. "Look, I don't believe in fate. That's bullshit, as far as I'm concerned. But I have picked up some bits and pieces that … some demon may have a plan for Sam."

"A plan for Sam? What does that mean?"

"At this rate, I don't know. But I don't like it. And until I get more information, I think Sam should be kept away from any powerful demons. Do you understand now?"

Bobby still felt like John was hedging his bets, giving him a crumb of information but still holding back something. Although Bobby wasn't sure what or why, or what difference it would make. "Plan" sounded somehow ominous and innocuous at the same time. "If you're so worried about Sam, why haven't you collected him and Dean yet?"

It was a boot to the ribs, and Bobby knew it, but he wasn't sorry. He genuinely wanted to know. "I'm following a lead on the yellow eyed demon. It's the first sighting I've found in two years. I can't abandon it."

"You can, but you won't." Bobby knew he was being a judgmental asshole here, but hey, his kids. He should be taking care of them, not throwing all his weight behind his vengeance quest.

"Bobby, don't tell the kids. Just tell Dean I want him to take his brother and meet me at Coldwater, okay?"

Coldwater was probably one of the hunting cabins. He wondered if John even remembered Dean's birthday was in two days. Did it matter? "I'll pass on your message," he reluctantly replied. He wasn't going to like it, though. Not one damn bit.

* * *

Sam knew he was dreaming, but it didn't help.

He wanted to wake up, but he couldn't. He was stuck watching the orange eyed demon in his snow strewn circle of stones. He couldn't make out his face for some reason, just his eyes. A lot of the fine details were simply shadows, hard black against the soft white of snow.

Two men came into the circle, which Sam now saw was a semi-circle. The trees behind them looked almost skeletal. Had he seen this place before? It was itching at his mind. They dumped a bound, beaten man on the ground. His face was a swollen, bloody mess, and his hands and feet were both tied, and since he didn't move, he was either dead or unconscious. He looked like ground chuck, but the familiar hiking boots and Judas Priest t-shirt gave the body away as Dean. "The old guy's dead," one of the men said. "But this one just won't die."

The orange eyed demon chuckled. It sounded like gravel down a drainpipe. "Poor Dean isn't smart enough to know when to quit. So I'll give him a hand, shall I?"

In his hand was the blade of damnation. How the hell did Alastor have that? He grabbed Dean by the hair, lifting up his bloody head, and with one vicious swipe, cut his throat wide open. Blood fountained out, staining the snow red.

It began forming a puddle, and as the puddle widened, Alastor drove the tip of the blade into the ground. He was saying something too, a spell, even though the words were slippery and Sam couldn't make them out. He was reasonably sure the language wasn't human.

The pool began to swirl, to expand, and change color. It shaded to black as Alastor pulled the knife out of the ground, and Sam realized Alastor was somehow creating a hole. No, not a hole. A doorway.

Sam spied movements in the deeper darkness, furtive and sinister, when he woke up screaming.


	8. Invitation To The Voyage

_**8 – Invitation To The Voyage**_

Dean knew instantly it was Sam screaming. It woke him from a dead sleep, but he still knew.

He rolled out of bed, hand reaching under his pillow and pulling out his gun before he was even standing. He was out his bedroom door before he even felt fully awake, and burst in Sam's door, gun out, safety off, ready to bust a cap in whatever the fuck was attacking his brother. He was barely aware of Bobby pounding up the staircase behind him.

Sam met his gaze with a blank, startled one, breathing heavy, eyes glued to the gun. "What's wrong?" Dean asked, keeping an eye on every shadow, trying to look everywhere in the room at once.

"It's okay, it was just a nightmare," Sam said, running a hand through his hair. It looked wet from sweat. Which was bizarre, because Dean was standing here in boxer shorts and a tank top, and it just occurred to him it was fucking freezing. Parts of Bobby's house were simply drafty, no matter what Bobby did.

Dean eased the safety back on, lowering his gun. "Just a nightmare? You were screaming bloody murder."

Sam rubbed his face with his hands, and Dean could tell he was having a hard time holding himself together. What the fuck had he just dreamed?

Bobby entered the room, and said, "Nightmare? Sounded more like a night terror." He looked down at the gun in Dean's hands. "Do you sleep with that?"

"No," he lied. Dean had no idea why he felt so defensive about it.

Sam looked at the both of them, hands still covering the lower half of his face. He looked drawn and shell shocked. "What the hell was the dream, man?" Dean asked.

Sam shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I can't really remember most of it. Mainly I just remember blood." He shuddered, and Dean didn't think it was a reaction to the cold.

There was no going back to bed after that, so Dean went back to his room to put his gun away and get dressed, and Bobby went downstairs and made a mess of scrambled eggs. Sam took a very long shower, and seemed a little better when he got out, but was still looking hollowed eyed and stunned. He said he had a headache, and took three Excedrin.

Over breakfast, Bobby told them what he'd figured out, that the late hunter Phil might be their best bet for having the blade, but they'd have to tear up his property to look for it, since he'd probably buried it in a warded box. Since he had a couple of acres, it might take a while.

Sam, who'd mainly been eating toast – and Dean had no idea why, 'cause Bobby made great scrambled eggs – finally spoke for the first time since he came downstairs. "Can't we do a locator spell?"

Bobby shook his head. "Not for a warded box, no."

"Not even for the box itself?"

"I warded them to be resistant to spells."

"All of them? What about indirect ones?"

Dean continued eating, fascinated by this exchange between Sam and Bobby. It kind of amazed him Sam had such a natural grasp of this kind of shit. Bobby gave him that "are we sure he's a kid" look again before glancing back at Sam. "What d'ya mean?"

Sam considered it a moment. "What about a dowsing spell?"

Dean finally knew something about this. "Isn't that for water?"

Sam shook his head. "Not exclusively. You can use a dowsing rod to find other objects."

"It's not an indirect spell if you're dowsing for the box," Bobby said, eying Sam skeptically.

"But if we're just dowsing for _a_ box, not a specific one, that's indirect."

Bobby sat back, cradling his coffee mug in his hands. "He's probably got a lotta boxes back there."

Sam shrugged. "So? We'll just dig until we get the right one. It's a lot quieter, and less likely to do damage to the box than an earth mover."

"Sounds good to me," Dean said. Of course, he would probably be doing half the digging if not most of it, and he was already tired of digging up shit - how many graves had he single handedly dug these last couple of days? At this rate he was going to get carpal tunnel in his elbows – but it was a good plan.

Bobby sighed and nodded. "Yeah, makes sense. Okay, we'll give it a shot. Sure you're up to it?"

"I'm fine," Sam said, ripping his latest piece of toast into pieces. Dean and Bobby exchanged a look that said they were on the same page: Sam was absolutely not okay. But if he wanted to pretend he was okay, they'd play along. For now.

Dean helped Bobby clear up the dishes while Sam went to find a good dowsing rod – there were apparently rules dictating what made a good dowsing rod, and somehow Sam knew them – and Dean got the weirdest feeling Bobby was waiting to tell him something. He turned out to be correct.

"Your Dad called this morning," Bobby said, dumping the rest of his coffee out in the sink.

Dean felt a twinge in his stomach. It was a combination of excitement and dread, and he hated it. "Really? What did he say? Is he coming up to join us?"

Bobby sighed, and his shoulders sank, and Dean's bad feeling intensified. "He said he wants you to take Sam and go to Coldwater right away."

It took Dean a moment to place it. That hunting cabin in Montana. That was not his favorite, because it got fucking freezing in there, no matter the size of the fire you had going, and it was constantly riddled with spiders, which was just fucking annoying. But that was not the worst part of this. "But … Alastor, the blade of damnation. We can't just leave you alone to handle this."

Bobby lifted up his grimy trucker hat and scratched his head. "Maybe it's better that you do. If anything happened to you kids, I'd never forgive myself."

"Bobby, we're not leaving you to deal with this alone. Especially when we're so close to finding the blade."

Bobby met his eyes, and he could see that Bobby really didn't want to say this. "He was pretty insistent that you take Sam and go."

"I'm sure he was. But we're not leaving you."

Bobby clapped him on the shoulder. "It might be safer."

Dean shook his head, jaw tensing. He didn't like to disobey his Dad, but leave Bobby with all this shit? He couldn't imagine it. His stomach hurt just thinking about disappointing Dad, but this wouldn't be the first time, or even the last. Dean seemed to have discovered a terrible knack for disappointing him. "Not going. I'll leave once we get this thing settled, if Dad isn't here already to kick my ass."

Bobby nodded. "You sure? The kid seems … kinda upset."

"Sammy's a tough kid. He'll be okay. Besides, if he knew I left you hanging 'cause of him, he'd never forgive me." Dean knew the latter was true. He just hoped the former was true as well.

* * *

The drive over to Phil's was uneventful, although Dean kept an eye on Sammy in the back seat. He was almost uncharacteristically quiet, and when they were discussing strategy, Sammy piped up and was adamant that they should not separate. He didn't say why, beyond it being a really bad idea. He and Bobby shared a look that suggested they were thinking the same thing: nightmare. He remembered more than he said, but didn't want to discuss it. Dean was dying of curiosity, but he understood. There were lots of nightmares he had that he'd never want to discuss with anyone. He didn't even like to think about them.

Phil's house was old and starting to crumble, and the pretty white snow icing did nothing to distract from its rotting nature. The gate into the back wasn't very stable, so they were easily able to get into the back yard, which seemed to roll on forever. Dean found it funny to think that such a dangerous item could have been here, out in the open, behind a poorly maintained fence, and the big, bad demon couldn't find it. Boy, when he found out – if he ever found out – he would feel like such an ass. Dean felt like writing a note, so he'd know.

Sam had the enchanted dowsing rod, which was just an ordinary forked stick, but he held it and let it guide him, while he and Bobby had shovels, and took turns digging up what Sam found. The first thing they dug up was a sealed cigar box full of old coins, and the second was a shoebox grave for what appeared to be the skeleton of a guinea pig. (Why not?) The third thing was a wooden box with what looked to be a couple amulets in it, and Bobby thought they might be supernatural artifacts, so he set it aside.

They found boxes with gold coins, boxes with bones, even a box with what looked like an old timey book in it. Bobby was making a small pile of possible artifacts he intended to take with them. The field was Swiss cheese, dotted with holes, and Dean actually lost track of what number it was when he uncovered a locked wooden box covered with arcane symbols. 'That's it," Bobby said, working on the lock.

"Should you open it?" Sam asked. He seemed nervous. "Won't Alastor know where it is the second you open the box?"

He shook his head. "Not as long as I don't take it out of the box." He managed the lock, and pried the lid open. Inside was a wicked looking curved knife, with more than a few arcane symbols of its own carved into it. "That's one mean looking son of a bitch," Bobby said.

That was an understatement. Dean couldn't tell how sharp it was, but he had a feeling it could slice through just about anything.

Bobby closed the box and locked it again. "Okay, got what we came for. Let's go."

"We should destroy it." Sam said.

"Sure," Bobby agreed. "And how do we do that? I only recognize a couple of the symbols carved onto it, but one of them is an anti-destruction sigil."

"Can we destroy that?"

Bobby glanced at Dean, tacitly asking why he was so hepped up to destroy it, but Dean could only shrug. This was the first he'd heard of it. "We can try and melt it off. If it's enchanted, it won't work."

"Maybe we can figure something out."

Why did Sam want to destroy it? As soon as he got the chance, he was going to have to ask him.

But that got back burnered pretty quickly. Once they loaded up all the artifacts in the car, and drove back to Bobby's place – traffic was okay, but the roads were pretty slippery, as apparently salting the roads was not on the city's to-do list today – Dean realized it was almost time to meet Finn.

Finn had agreed to meet them on the site of the old purity camp, which Bobby felt was probably their best bet for getting Oliver to come to the table. Where he died would be a more powerful draw than where he was buried, psychically and emotionally.

It was a forty minute drive, that the weather turned into a seventy three minute one. It started to snow a little, but stopped by the time they arrived. Sam could have stayed at home, he wasn't necessary for this, but he wanted to come, and Dean actually felt that was for the best. He didn't like the idea of leaving Sam alone now that they had the blade. He didn't want Alastor to get any ideas.

Finn was waiting for them, buried in a big brown parka, thick gray scarf, and a gray watch cap. His cheeks were red, possibly reacting to the cold, but he also seemed fidgety and nervous. Probably because this was his first séance.

Bobby fucking hated séances, and knew he wasn't any good at them, but since they were lacking a psychic right now – Teri had apparently up and left – there was no choice in the matter. This was a first for Dean, because he'd never taken part in a séance held outside. He didn't even know you could do them outside, but why not?

The site of the former purity camp was currently nothing, just scrubland, now hidden under snow. It could have been any place, anywhere, but Dean thought he felt … something. An energy. But it could have been psychosomatic. He expected to feel something, so he did.

There was no cover, so they cleared out a patch of snow as best they could, and the four of them sat on the frozen ground, as Bobby put out the symbol laden cloth and ritual candles necessary for a séance. "So this is a family thing," Finn asked. "Monster hunting?"

Sam nodded. "We didn't get a choice. We were born into it."

Finn stared at Bobby. "You're their Dad?"

He snorted. "I wish. Naw, I'm an … Uncle." That was probably for the best. Otherwise it was a long, complicated story that Finn didn't need to know.

He nodded, but there was an expression on Finn's face that Dean couldn't interpret. Maybe he was thinking about how he didn't even have that much family anymore.

Bobby little the candles, and they sat in a tight circle around the cloth. They all held hands, with Dean holding Sam's casted hand, because he didn't want anyone to accidentally hurt him worse, and one of Finn's hands. He'd just taken off his gloves, which meant Finn's hand was warm, which Dean really appreciated. Maybe it wasn't snowing right now, but fuck, was it cold. "Nobody laugh," Bobby warned them, saving a stink eye especially for Dean. What? Just 'cause he found it hard to keep a straight face during these things? How was that his fault? They were fucking ridiculous, and didn't always work.

Bobby started with the basics. "Oliver Treadway, we summon thee. Oliver Treadway, if you're here, give us a sign." They waited a moment, and there was nothing, so Bobby repeated the words. By the third repetition, the candle flames flared, doubling their height and twisting into an almost braided pattern, making one huge flame.

"Whoa," Finn said, leaning back. Dean felt the tension in his hand, like he was about to let go, so Dean grasped his hand tighter. He needed to stay in the circle, as silly as this all was.

Bobby nodded at Finn. It was his turn. "Oliver? Ollie, it's Finn. Will you talk to me? I need to know where you are. Ollie?"

Suddenly, the semi-translucent figure of Oliver materialized, barely two feet away. Dean felt the hair on his arms standing on end, and the air seemed to crackle with static electricity. He seemed calm, but the air was rife with angry ghost energy. He still wasn't happy. "Finn?" His voice could have been the wind whistling through a chain link fence. It was thin, ephemeral, and seemed like Oliver was barely hanging on to what sanity he had. Dean was glad he had an iron bar and a sawed off full of rock salt in his backpack. Better safe than sorry. "You shouldn't be with them."

Finn was shocked dumb for a moment, but he squeezed Dean's hand and found his voice. "What? Why?"

"It wants them."

"What wants them?"

"Alastor?" Bobby asked.

Oliver looked at Finn before responding. "If that's its name."

"Why?" Dean asked. "Why does it want us?"

Oliver shook his head. "It hungers. It is all hunger."

That was not only no answer at all, but it was a super disturbing non-answer. Dean felt Sam shift slightly beside him, and glanced at him, and realized something that hit him with the force of a blow: he knew. Sam knew this. How? And why the fuck hadn't he shared it with them?

At least Finn stayed on point. "Oliver, where are you buried? We need to know."

"I don't want to go home," Oliver said, and that static electrical feeling increased, as the candle flames juttered wildly. This was a sore topic with him.

"You won't have to go home," Finn reassured him. "We just want you to rest. We want the world to know what was done to you."

Oliver was quiet for several very long seconds, Dean wondered if he'd frozen. Finally, he started speaking again. "I could kill them all."

"That isn't you," Finn said. "Don't be like them, Ollie. Don't let them win."

"It wants me to do it. It hungers."

"What do you want to do?" Finn asked. Maybe he hadn't done a séance before, but he was a natural at talking to ghosts. Lucky them.

Oliver disappeared, and then reappeared on the far side of the lot, near a collection of weedy trees. He looked back at them, waiting.

They broke the circle, standing up, and let Finn leas the way as the ghost of Oliver led them through some vacant plots of land, to a pretty pastoral area near an iced over pond. But if it wasn't for the cold weather, Dean realized the area they were standing on, a mucky area under some towering pines, would be muddy, brackish, and riddled with skunk cabbage. In summer, it probably stank like hell. What a perfect place to bury a body.

Oliver indicated he was right under their feet. Bobby had a shovel slung over his shoulder, and Dean had a camping shovel in his pack. Together, they started digging through the icy but still mucky ground, and the scent of decomposition hit their noses almost immediately. He wasn't buried that deep. It made Dean angry. If anyone had genuinely looked for Oliver, they would have found him without much effort. What the fuck was wrong with this town?

The body was buried about two and a half feet down, and the moisture of the soil had made for excellent, rapid decomposition. It was why swamps were great places to dump bodies. Finn turned away, looking green as a frog, but managed not to barf. Possibly this was his first dead body.

"Oliver, can you stop yourself?" Dean asked. He was hoping the goodwill of mentioning Finn beforehand was carrying over.

Oliver did narrow his eyes at him briefly, but it was a lightning flash of rage that dissipated the moment it showed up. "I don't know. I think I want to … but it won't let me."

Bobby mentioned that might be the case. The demon driving the ghosts, whether they liked it or not. They were simply a tool for Alastor, and whatever his endgame was. "We can put you to rest. Will you let us?"

Oliver seemed to think about it for a moment. He'd been a good looking kid. God, this was a billion different kinds of sad. Sometimes Dean wondered why he even fought demons and monsters if people were going to be such pieces of shit they were no better. Hell, people were worse. Demons and monsters had a reason for what they did. In humans, it was just pure shittiness.

The ghost looked at Finn, who had turned back in their direction, but was resolutely not looking at the decayed corpse in the hole. "Do you trust them?"

Finn looked at Dean for a moment. "Yes."

Dean gave him a nod of thanks, and pulled out the salt and lighter fluid in his pack. He gave one to Bobby, and the other to Sam. "Everyone will know," Finn assured Oliver.

"They'll pay for what they did," Dean agreed. "One way or another."

Sam gave him a suspicious sidelong glance as he salted the corpse. Dean honestly wasn't sure how far he'd go with that promise. It was one of those things that probably depended on whether he was having a good day, or a very bad one.

Oliver nodded, and Finn had a hand over his mouth, trying not to cry, but there were tears running down his cheeks in spite of it all. Bobby lit the body up, and Finn managed to choke out, "Goodbye, Oliver."

Oliver raised his hand in farewell, as fire started consuming his image. But before he went, Oliver looked at him, Sam, and Bobby, and said, "The demon's scared of you." There was no time for follow ups, as flames consumed his spectral form.

"It should be fuckin' scared of us," Bobby said. "We're gonna kill it."

Finn needed a moment to pull himself together. "He didn't suffer, right?"

Dean shook his head, breaking down his camping shovel and putting it back in his pack. "Beyond pain. Now, once we get out of here, make an anonymous call to the police, say you saw a fire out here. They'll find the body, and they'll have a shit ton of investigating to do, but it should lead back to Krothe's camp once the DNA tests identify the body. Keep stepping on their necks and don't let up until they indict those sons of bitches."

Finn nodded, wiping away tears and snot with the back of his hand. "Thank you."

"Don't thank us," Bobby said. "Thank you for helping us put one angry spirit to rest." Bobby gave him an encouraging slap on the arm. "You were great. You helped your friend. Be proud of yourself."

They started leaving, but Finn surprised Dean by hugging him. Dean patted him on the back, not sure what to do in this situation. "You're gonna be okay. You survived. Now go get some justice for those that didn't."

"Be careful out there, Dean." Finn said.

Dean patted him again, and this time Finn let him go. "Always." Of course that was a lie, but there was no need for Finn to know that.

They cut back to the field to gather up the séance stuff, and then returned to the car. While loading up the gear in Bobby's trunk, Bobby said, "I keep forgettin' that about you."

"What?"

"You're a sweet kid."

Dean rolled his eyes. "I'm not –"

"Don't denigrate it, it's a good quality to have, especially in this business." Bobby grabbed him by the shoulder, and gave it a friendly squeeze. "Hold on to that compassion. It's a good thing. Don't let John ever tell you otherwise."

Dean smirked, wondering if this was another Bobby versus his Dad thing again – oh, they claimed to be friends, but it was a pugnacious friendship at the best of times – but he decided to accept it as a compliment.

Now, if they could just kill Alastor, they'd have it made.


	9. Burst

_**9 – Burs** **t**_

On the drive back, Bobby wondered if he'd made a huge mistake not encouraging Dean to take Sam and leave.

The fact that Dean defied his father was remarkable enough. But Sam seemed … well, what did he seem? Spooked? He hadn't been the same since his nightmare. Now Bobby was half convinced he should just drive to the bus station and put Sam and Dean on it. He had the blade, so that was half the job done. They didn't need to be in on the more dangerous second half. Would Dean go for that, though? He'd give him no choice.

He was about to say something to this effect when he turned down the long road to his house, and saw, up ahead, a blue Toyota Corolla partially in a ditch, and a person in a huge blue parka standing beside it. He recognized the car as belong to Mrs. Meyers, an elderly neighbor. He pulled off behind the car, and he and Dean got out. "You okay, Greta?" Bobby asked.

She turned, and it looked like the coat was trying to swallow her whole. She was just a small head balanced on puffy layers of down filled polyester-cotton blend. "Just shaken up," she replied. "I can't believe it. I've driven these roads for fifty years, and I've never skidded into anything."

Dean was already checking the back of the car. "Tires look good. I don't think there's any damage, although they better watch the axel when they pull it out."

Mrs. Meyers looked at Dean blankly. "This is my nephew, Dean," Bobby lied.

"Oh. I called my grandsons to help me, and here they are."

A big black SUV pulled up behind Bobby's car, and a couple of broad shouldered men in dark coats got out. Bobby found himself wondering what was wrong with this picture when he realized what the problem was. "Grandsons? I thought you just had the one."

Dean stood up, putting his hands in his pockets, waiting to see what happened.

Mrs. Meyers smiled at him, but it was an odd one, mostly teeth. "It's so rare anyone gets to know their neighbors anymore. Especially old farts like this." Her eyes flashed black, but before Bobby could react, she punched him with a fist that felt like it was made of concrete, and everything went dark.

* * *

When Sam came to, he found himself handcuffed to a pipe. By his good hand, of course. His casted arm was free, but probably because it was assumed he could do little with it.

Sam sat up, head aching, and tried to figure out where he was. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he realized he was in someone's basement. It was so cold down here he could see his own breath.

The fight hadn't lasted long, but goddamn, Dean gave it a damn good try. After Bobby went down, he shot the possessed old lady with rock salt - wouldn't kill a demon, but did hurt them - and attempted to shoot one of the two big guys – also demons – but they were on him by them, beating him down with fists the size of ham hocks. Sam jumped out of the car, throwing holy water on them, but he took a backhand fist to the face, and he was out. Dean probably wasn't conscious for much longer either. Demons were stronger than humans, regardless of vessel, and when they had big, muscular vessels, you were doubly screwed.

Sam heard weird thuds upstairs, over his head. There was no real rhyme or reason to them. He was alone in the basement, which figured. Sam began looking around for something he could use to pick the lock, but there wasn't anything within reach. Damn it.

A door opened, casting light into the gloom, and he heard Dean's voice quite clearly. "Go fuck yourself, chuckles." This was followed by a meaty sound, fists hitting a body, and Sam realized what those thuds were. They were beating Dean upstairs, and he was making it worse on himself by taunting them. But he didn't expect anything less from Dean, who would die with defiance on his bloody lips. It was bravery and stupidity combined. He loved his brother, but he sincerely wished he would stow the attitude sometimes.

A man came down the stairs. He was long and lean, dressed in dark clothing, and Sam didn't recognize him, save for his orange eyes. "Dean doesn't know where it is," Sam said. "Neither does Bobby. Only I do, and if either of them dies, I've never telling you."

Alastor chuckled. He looked like a nondescript middle aged man, notable only for his skeletal thinness. "Is that true, Samuel?"

"I knew you were coming. I saw you. I know you saw me too."

He grinned, and it was cold and terrible. "What if I kill them both if you don't tell me where it is?"

"Then you were going to kill them anyway, and I will die with the knowledge. You'll never get the blade back, and won't that piss off your boss?"

He crouched down, getting closer to his eye level, but staying out of kicking distance. "You think you have room to negotiate?"

"I do, actually. You're torturing Dean and Bobby upstairs. But not me. Why?"

"You're a child. What could you know?"

Sam shook his head. "You can't hurt me."

Alastor gave him a backhand slap across the face, busting open his bottom lip. "Wanna bet?"

Sam looked back at him, smirking. The taste of blood just made him angrier. "Uh huh. Do it again. And again. Keep doing it. Punch me."

Alastor's smile died a slow death on his face. "Is this a kink for you? Do you get off on this?"

"I saw the end result of what you're doing. You killed Bobby, and used Dean's blood to open a portal into Hell. But I was left alive to watch. I don't know why – I still can't figure out why – but I know you can't really hurt me. Wanna tell me why?"

Alastor was now scowling at him. "You don't have that kind of power, boy."

"Don't I? What am I being saved for, Alastor?"

He stood up. "Tell me where the blade is, or we slit your brother open like a hog."

Sam shook his head. "Leave Dean alone. If you don't, I'll never tell you shit. Same for Bobby."

"You're bluffing."

"When we got home, I was supposed to take the box containing the blade to the basement. But since Bobby and Dean were busy getting the séance stuff, I didn't. I hid it on the grounds. And you know Bobby's junkyard, right? It'll take you weeks if not months to search all of it. And my Dad's on his way here. How do you like your odds?" That last bit was a lie, as far as Sam knew, but everything else was true. He did hide it where only he knew where it was, and didn't tell Dean or Bobby. If he was to be spared this attack for whatever reason, then by God, he was going to fucking use it.

The orange in Alastor's eyes briefly flared brighter. "You're a precocious piece of shit, you know that?"

"And you're still beating my brother. Hmm. Now I can't remember which car I hid it in. Was it the front or the back? It's getting fuzzy."

Alastor pouted as good as any teenage girl. "You little piece of shit."

"Time's wasting," Sam said."Tick tock."

Alastor stomped up the stairs, and opened the door, shouting, "Stop!"

Sam was happy to win this round, but he was a long way from winning the war. He'd spared Dean and Bobby for the moment, but that was all. Once they returned to Bobby's house, all bets were off. He'd have to hand over the blade, but as soon as he did, they were both dead. He was limited in what he could, and how long he could stall.

In hard spots, when he was out of ideas, Sam liked to think "what would Dean do"? In this instance, it wasn't helpful, because Dean would just fuck shit up as much as possible, with as much attitude as possible. He would make things worse, and get dead as soon as he was physically able. Sometimes it wasn't helpful, because often Dean's M.O. was just to do the stupidest thing in any situation.

But now that Sam was thinking about it, maybe doing something stupid wasn't the worst idea in the world. In fact, it gave him a plan.

If he did it correctly, they might have a fighting chance against Alastor and his demon henchmen. If he was wrong, he'd just kill them all. But hey, death was the most likely outcome anyway, right?

If he had to die, better to die by his own hands than at the hands of demons. If Sam repeated that to himself enough, he might even believe it.


	10. Knock Down Bruise and Bleed

_**10 – Knock Down Bruise and Bleed**_

Sam was eventually led out of the basement, and the house, to an old Buick he didn't recognize. Why had they gotten rid of the SUV? Sam didn't figure it out until he was put in the backseat, beside a bloodied, handcuffed Bobby. "Are you okay?" Sam asked. He was handcuffed too, but not all that worried about it.

"I've had worse," Bobby said. His left eye was starting to swell, and he had blood leaking from his nose, and dried on his chin. "How are you?"

"Okay. Where's Dean?"

There was thudding from the trunk that almost shook the entire car. "Knock it off!" Alastor snapped.

Ah, that's why they switched vehicles. They locked Dean in the trunk. Probably hogtied him too. Even beaten to a pulp, Dean didn't stop fighting. He admired Dean for that, while at the same time he feared for him, because one day, without a doubt, that was getting him killed. Full stop. Some demon would just put a bullet in his head so he didn't have to deal with the annoying asshole anymore. Of course, if you asked Dean, he wouldn't have it any other way. He wanted to go down fighting. Still, Sam glared molten death at Alastor. "Did you have to do that to him?"

"It was either that or strap him to the roof."

He was kicking again, probably trying to open the trunk – he might be able to; he was good at impossible escapes – so Sam raised his voice and shouted, "Dean, it's okay! I'm okay! Save your strength!" He hoped the tacit follow up – "Because you're going to need it to kick some demon ass" – wasn't too obvious.

Dean heard him, because he stopped kicking, but his muffled voice emerged from the back. "You fucking touch my brother and I'll murder each and every fucking one of you!"

Alastor rolled his eyes and shook his head, but Dean meant it. It was the one comforting thing Sam had to hang onto whenever a monster took him hostage. His brother was coming for him, and was going to kick its ass. What kind of life did he have that this had happened several times to Sam, and every time, Dean did not disappoint him. Dad did, Dad had, but not Dean. Sam wondered if one day he'd crawl out of his grave to save him, because he'd done just about everything else short of that. It was sweet, but Sam couldn't help but feel it was also slightly suffocating. Not when he was in danger, of course. When he was in danger, it was his lifeline.

One of the demon henchmen shoved into the backseat with them, sandwiching Sam between him and Bobby, and another sat up front with Alastor. Did that mean they were only dealing with two demons plus Alastor? That was manageable. Assuming they could get free, and figure out a way to kill them.

It was not a long drive to Bobby's place. But Sam couldn't help but notice Bobby had picked the lock on his cuffs, and managed to surreptitiously drop the piece of wire he used into Sam's hand, without the demon beside them noticing. So Bobby was ready to go, and Sam knew he was. He just had to hope Dean was too, when the time came. It would put his whole "born ready" glibness to the test.

When they reached Bobby's and got out, Bobby said, "So you didn't follow my request and put it in the basement?"

"No." Bobby sounded peeved, in a way he never sounded with him. Sam guessed he wanted to start a fight as a distraction. He could roll with that. "Why would I? In your basement? You might as well put it on the porch with a big "knife here" sign on it."

The biggest demon henchman opened the trunk, and hauled Dean out. Sam was not prepared for how bad Dean looked. He'd gotten it worse than any of them. Both his eyes were blackened and starting to swell, he had a clearly broken nose that was still bleeding, and a trail of blood down the side of his neck suggested he'd either been bleeding from the ears, or a cut on his scalp. It was hard to say from this distance. His lower lip was split, the corner of his mouth torn, and the left side of his jaw was starting to swell. And still, in spite of it all, Dean was giving them his best fuck you glare, and yanked his shoulder free when the demon grabbed him.

Bobby gasped at the sight of him. "You motherfuckers. He's a boy!"

"He's a foul mouthed little shit," Alastor snapped. "And there's nothing I hate more than a shaved ape who doesn't know his place."

"Fuck you, asshole." Dean spit blood at him, and hit him on the side of the face. Sam couldn't help but cringe, because Dean had just invited more needless violence on himself.

Alastor simply waived his hand, and Dean went flying, finally slamming into a pile of crushed cars and disappearing beneath the scrap metal. Bobby surged forward but was grabbed by the other hench demon. Sam simply glared at Alastor. "I told you if you hurt him –"

"He's not dead yet, he's just out of our hair. He was a drag anyway." Alastor pointed at Bobby, and the hench demon produced a gun that he pointed at Bobby's head. "There's a lot of places where you can shoot a human and not immediately kill them. Would you like a demonstration?"

"No."

"Then lead us to the blade, boy."

There was something these demons didn't know about Bobby. He had lots of security around his yard, as most people who had auto yards did. The only difference was, most of Bobby's traps were set for demons and other monsters. Sam led the way deeper into the maze of junked cars. "What's my guarantee you don't hurt us after I give you the blade?"

"You don't have any guarantees in this life, Sam. Hasn't your big, bad father taught you that?" Alastor replied. He sounded cheerfully smug.

Bobby gasped again, and Sam looked back to make sure he was okay, but Bobby was staring at Alastor in shock. "You wanted the boys too."

Alastor barely gave him a glance back. "What, you old drunk?"

"The sins of the father. You punished the children for it. You wanted to punish John Winchester too, didn't you?"

Suddenly Sam understood what Bobby meant. Holy shit. He didn't just want the blade, he wanted them too. But … how did that make sense? Alastor wouldn't touch Sam. He clearly beat the shit out of Dean, but Sam was untouchable. Why? Was only one child punished? Was there some kind of method to his violence?

"No one deserves more punishment than Winchester."

"You don't know the rest of his plan, Bobby," Sam said, deciding now was probably the time to spill it. If they survived, and Bobby asked him later how he knew it, he'd say he overheard Alastor talking about it. "The blade isn't just a weapon of execution. It's a key to a door that opens up to Hell."

"What?"

"Alastor's trying to open a fast lane to Hell. Isn't that right?"

"How the hell is a knife a key?" Bobby asked.

"It's a bit more complicated than that," Alastor said. "There's a ritual. You need the right words, the blood of the righteous, a few vanquished souls. It's not as simple as you think."

"Why?" Bobby asked. "Why here, why now?"

Alastor snickered. "Wouldn't you like to know? Big things are afoot, but you're gonna be too dead to care."

Sam had led them deep into the crushed car maze. Only if you knew this place very well could you find your way out without hitting a dead end. Bobby and Sam knew the layout. Alastor and his demon henchmen didn't. It was perhaps the only advantage they had.

Sam suddenly froze; it felt like he was grabbed by an invisible fist. It was Alastor, using his powers on him. "You wouldn't be leading us on a wild goose chase, would you Sam? It'd be terrible if Bobby had to pay for it."

"It's here," Sam managed to choke out. He barely managed to nod his head towards the left. "It's in the trunk of that '78 Chrysler New Yorker."

Alastor and one of the hench demons looked around, but seemed confused. Sam felt the pressure ease on him. "Uh, um. You're going to have to be a little more specific."

What a shock. They didn't know cars either. Actually, Sam wasn't exactly great on them, but he'd picked up quite a bit from Bobby. "It's that blue-gray one, on the top of the third pile?" After a second, Sam sighed. "Should I just get it?"

"No," Alastor said. "Show him."

Sam stepped forward, a hench demon right behind him. "Don't get cute, boy," Alastor warned him.

Sam had no intention. Although you'd think the demons might have noticed the strong smell of gas around here, except most of the junkyard did have a vague gasoline smell. It was just there were leaking gas tanks here, and it had sunk into the dirt and gravel over the years.

Sam knew the demons had already taken all his weapons; he didn't even need to check. But they hadn't taken his lighter. And why would they? By itself, it wasn't a weapon. A tiny little flame wasn't going to do shit to any demon, and especially not one of Alastor's caliber. This was going to be tricky, as well as unbelievably stupid and dangerous. But who said Dean was the only one who tried stupid shit?

Sam indicated the car, and stood back as the hench demon pried open the trunk. It was smashed in, so it took a minute. And the second it open, it hit a nearly invisible fishing line, and a small bomb of salt and holy water went off, splattering the hench demon.

He screamed and reeled back, all his skin sizzling and smoking, as he'd taken most of the anti-demon bomb full on. Bobby knew it was going to happen – he planted the explosives, after all – and tackled the hench demon behind him, riding him to the ground and punching him in the face.

Sam looked around for a weapon – the knife was actually close, as he had an idea it would be really useful if he could get to it before Alastor – but he'd barely moved a step towards the smoldering hench demon and his weapon when Alastor cried, "Enough!"

With a wave of his hand, he'd thrown Bobby into a wall of crushed cars, and had him pinned up against them. "Do you want to watch him get vivisected?" Alastor demanded, his lips twisting in rage. "You have three seconds to produce the blade, or I start crushing his limbs one by one."

Sam had his hand on his lighter. Could he flick it open and throw it down in time? Would the fire even catch near Alastor? He'd run out of time to even consider this, as Alastor moved one of his fingers, and Bobby screamed as his arm twisted, and Sam could hear the crunch of breaking bones.

Goddamn it! He'd just killed them all.


	11. Five Bodies

_**11 – Five Bodies**_

Dean figured that that could have gone better, but it could have gone so much worse.

He was one big ball of pain, so you'd think he couldn't possibly hurt more, but Dean had learned one thing through these many years of monster hunting, and that was there was no ceiling on pain. You could think you were suffering the worst pain you had ever felt, and then five minutes later, it would be topped.

Now Dean had expected more pain. He knew continuing his show of defiance would get him punished, and he figured maybe he'd get knocked out. Getting thrown into the cars was way better, and way worse. Landing hurt. It really hurt. He was sure he was cut by jagged edges of metal on his back and arms, slices that burned, and he came down hard on metal, and his head swam. He felt his consciousness slowly slipping away, falling through his fingers like sand. The more he tried to hang on, the more he couldn't. Losing consciousness sounded nice, really, like having a nap.

But he couldn't now, and he had to fight it. So he bit into his cheek. No, he gnawed. He felt the flesh between his teeth, and tasted a fresh gout of blood in his mouth, and the pain was sharp and cleansing. His consciousness came back at a crawl, but it was sticking around, so that was something.

Lying in metal rubble, bleeding like he'd been massaged by a cheese grater, he still felt lucky, as there were springs and screws and wires all around him, and he was able to pick the cuffs on him quite easily, even though his hands were shaking, possibly from the pain. Dean had to figure out a way to stand quietly, without causing a crushed car cascade, but he pulled it off. He felt a little woozy, but it passed.

Now the problem of what he was supposed to do. Sam and Bobby had led the demons deeper into the stacks, which was great, as Bobby had demon booby traps out there. But while it would hurt them, it wouldn't kill them. It may not even hurt them for long. What could he do?

It didn't help that Dean found it hard to think right now. His entire head felt like an infected boil forever on the verge of popping, but refusing to do so. Could he assume Alastor's vessel was gone? High powered demons had a tendency to burn their hosts out fast. If he could, he knew how to distract him if not hurt him. Oh, fuck it. He'd accept that death on his head if he could save Sam and Bobby.

Dean paused to spit out another mouthful of blood, and then staggered into the work shed. He hastily made what he needed, and picked up one of Bobby's hidden guns, as well as a hidden bottle of holy water. Bobby had been a hunter too long to be caught unaware.

Dean started down the stacks, following the sound of voices, starting to feel detached from his own body. But he focused, one foot in front of the other, one job to do. All he had to do was make sure Sammy and Bobby were safe, then he could rest.

Finally he tuned into what the voices were saying, and realized Sammy knew where the blade was. He didn't put it in the basement? He knew he'd heard the front door open! Not that that did any good now.

Dean heard one of Bobby's booby trap deploy, heard the agonized scream of the demon who took it, but it sounded like Alastor was still on his feet, and still in charge. It was a nice try, but it fell just a little short.

Dean lit the rag stuffed in the bottle of gasoline and alcohol – with a slurry of salt at the bottom – and came around the corner, getting a good view of Alastor's back. Dean threw the Molotov cocktail, and then pulled his gun and shot the loose hench demon in the back of the leg.

Alastor started to turn, but the bottle impacted right on his back, broke open, and set him on fire, as the hench demon dropped to his knees, and instantly regretted it. Normally damage to the vessel meant nothing to a demon, but it was hard to stand with just the one knee, and the pain was always startling.

Being on fire broke Alastor's concentration, and Bobby dropped to his own knees. He was within reach of the hench demon, who was cursing his wounded leg. "Head's up," Dean yelled, and tossed the bottle of holy water. Bobby caught it, and before the hench demon knew what was happening, Bobby had pulled off the cap and forced the water down the demon's throat.

Alastor made a hand gesture that seemed to put the flames out, while the hench demon apparently had had enough and vacated his damaged vessel in a vomited plume of spectral black smoke. Alastor ignored that, and turned to face Dean. "You little shit," he growled. His hair had burnt off, and most of his skin was blackened and crispy on his face and neck, but the demon within was still okay. No damage to the vessel was going to affect him in any respect. He held out his hand, and Dean felt like someone had just reached into his chest, grabbed his heart, and squeezed. He dropped to his knees, unable to breathe, or move, and the pain was terrible. Again, a new low had been reached. It was like he had a spiky, hot metal ember in his chest, and it was radiating poison. Black splotches contracted and exploded in front of his eyes. He still thought he saw Sam throw something to Bobby, but he couldn't see what it was.

Well, this had seemed like a good idea at the time. But then again, what did he expect fighting with a head injury?

* * *

For a second, Bobby thought that Alastor was one of those pyromancer demons, as he seemed to just burst into flames. But then the force holding Bobby released, and there was a gunshot that caused the hench demon closest to him to drop. If he didn't know it was Dean before then, he did now. Dean seemed to believe "when in doubt, take out the knees", which was actually fucking brilliant. Demons couldn't give a shit about gunshots, but leg injuries? Completely the worst, even for a demon. It was like having a car with one tire missing. In theory, still drivable, but what a nuisance.

"Head's up," Dean said, and tossed him a bottle. Bobby recognized it as one of his stash of holy water bottles.

Bobby popped off the cap, and jammed it into the mouth of the hench demon, holding it in there with both hands as holy water gurgled down his throat. He grabbed Bobby's already injured arm hard, giving him a bewildered, angry stare, but he was already smoking and burning.

Bobby did his best not to stare at Dean directly, but out of the corner of his eye. He looked worse than before, like a refugee from the Evil Dead. How was he conscious? And when and why did he construct a Molotov cocktail?

Not that he was complaining. Alastor put it out, but turned his wrath on Dean, ignoring them. Bobby saw Sam digging beneath a small pile of hub caps, and he pulled out the warded box. That seemed both wildly obvious and crazy smart. They'd search trunks and glove boxes before it'd occur to them to look through a stack of hubcaps.

Sam glanced at him, and Bobby nodded, holding out his hands since the demon being waterboarded with holy water decided to blow this pop stand. Sam tossed him the box, and he caught it, ignoring the twinge in his injured arm. He'd had worse, and knowing how his life had gone, he'd probably have even worse in the near future. He opened the box, pulled out the knife, and figured what the fuck. It sent whatever it killed to Hell, right? Bobby was curious how it would work on a demon.

He stood, and knew Alastor was turning, probably sensing the blade, but it was too late. He stabbed him right through the heart, punching the blade through to the hilt. "Get outta my yard, asshole," Bobby added, stepping back.

Alastor finished turning, and gazed at him with angry eyes, but they were also slightly empty, and he still smelled of burned hair, meat, and gasoline. Bobby figured it was going to be a long time before he grilled again. Alastor opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, he popped out of existence. The knife was left behind, and fell to the dirt.

The demon who'd been doused in the holy water booby trap smoked out, probably because he knew a lost cause when he saw it. Sam came over, asking, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Bobby lied. Goddamn, his arm hurt. But he couldn't complain, especially not with bloody horror Dean in view. When Sam saw his brother, he gasped in horror.

"Still with us, kiddo?" Bobby asked.

Dean nodded. "Hell yeah. We kicked their ass. But –" Whatever else he was going to say was lost, because Dean then fell forward, faceplanting in the dirt.

"Go call 9-1-1," Bobby told Sam, who ran off to do just that, while Bobby went to see if the demon vessels were still alive. He was really not looking forward to explaining this scene to emergency personnel, but he didn't have much choice. Who knew being a hunter would involve so much lying?

At least if he ever decided he had to return to civilian life, he had a built in job as a used car salesman.

* * *

Bobby made up such an extravagant lie about a robbery attempt, Sam was sure they were going to know he was lying and arrest him on the spot. But they never did.

They bought it, of course, probably because it was easier to believe than the reality of the situation. Maybe Bobby sold the hell out of it, he really didn't know, as Sam rode in the ambulance with Dean when the EMTs took him to the hospital.

Dean didn't regain consciousness on the ride, and the med techs were slightly baffled by some of his injuries, but Sam played so upset that they didn't ask him many questions. Not that he wasn't actually upset, he just heightened it to avoid questions he couldn't answer. Like why his brother looked like he had been beaten with fist shaped lead pipes, and had what looked like primer paint in gashes on his back. They were just going to have to live with some mysteries.

Dean was hurt fairly badly, and Sam had no idea where he found the strength to stay on his feet as long as he did. He had some internal bleeding, but hey, whenever you were a demon punching bag, that was bound to happen. Sam was hoping he'd become conscious just so he could ask why the hell he firebombed Alastor - although, to be fair, that actually did distract him – but Dean was out, and since they took him into surgery, it was going to be a while before he could ask.

Bobby eventually joined him in the waiting room, his arm in a sling now too. As Bobby himself pointed out, they were a matching pair. Sam caught him up on Dean's diagnosis, and while they sat with their cans of soda and cups of weak coffee, he decided he just had to know. "Alastor's gonna come back, isn't he?"

Bobby shrugged. "Dunno. I mean, his boss ain't gonna be pleased to see him returning without the knife, and once I figure out how to destroy the blade, he'll have nothing to come back for, will he? Except revenge. But let's hope Hell keeps him busy."

"Think you can get the anti-destruction sigil off it?"

"I know some people who are born to break shit. Hopefully we'll come up with something."

Sam nodded, looking down at his soda can. "How did you know the blade would work on him?"

"Didn't. But what the hell, right?" He sighed heavily. "How the hell are we all still alive just takin' random stabs in the dark like this?"

Sam shrugged. "Maybe we actually are lucky. Or something's looking out for us."

"Both options sound equally terrible." Bobby took a sip of his coffee. "Dean's gonna be okay."

"I know. He usually is." As Dean liked to say, he was too irritating to die. Sam found himself in the position of not wanting to ask a question, but having to all the same. "Why did Alastor decided to make Dean pay for Dad's sins, and not me too? Or instead?"

He exhaled heavily and shook his head. "Can't answer that one. Who knows why demons do half the shit they do." Bobby gave him a sidelong glance. "Gonna tell me why you hid the blade in a different place?"

Damn. Sam wished he'd had more time to think of a convincing lie. "I just had this feeling it shouldn't be in the house. I can't explain it, really."

Bobby studied him a moment, like maybe he was going to ask some uncomfortable follow ups. But Sam saw in his eyes as he made some internal decision to let this one go. Sam had no idea why, but he was grateful. "Good thinking."

Sam wondered if this meant he was psychic, since he saw what was going to happen, but since he saw it and changed it … what did that mean exactly? Maybe it was just some freak occurrence, and it would never happen again.

But why was Alastor saving him for something? He knew he was. There was no way in hell – no pun intended - that was good. What did it mean? Sam got this sinking feeling that turned his guts to lead. He was doomed, wasn't he? He always had this weird sense he was, even though Dean was always there to deny it. Maybe the biggest difference between him and Dean was Dean seemed to volunteer to be doomed when he didn't necessarily have to be. He would never understand that about his brother. Amongst other things. If only to break the silence, Sam asked, "Why did Dean Molotov cocktail Alastor?"

Bobby chuckled. "'Cause your brother's kinda crazy sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

They sat in silence for a while, waiting for the doctor to return and tell them Dean made it through okay, and Sam realized the first chance he got to get away from this demon haunted life, he was going to fucking take it. And if Dean had any brains at all, he'd join him.


	12. In The Distance Fading

_**12 – In The Distance Fading**_

Dean was so happy to get out of the hospital, he forgot to complain about not getting the good painkillers. Oh well. He was now legally able to drink, so there was that, although spending his birthday in the hospital was kind of a bummer. On the good side of that, though, he was unconscious for most of it, and Bobby and Sam got him great presents: a six pack of the good stuff, and a hunting knife with these special serrated teeth that cut just as much coming back out as going in. In other words, it was a surprisingly awesome birthday.

The hilarious thing? Dad still wasn't here yet. Bobby was pretending this didn't piss him off, but Sam didn't even try to hide how angry this made him. He seemed to be claiming he was furious on Dean's behalf, because Dean was in the hospital and he still didn't show? But Dean had learned not to take this stuff personally. Shit happened. And it wasn't like Dean wasn't going to recover, because he totally was. And he wasn't even hurt that bad. Granted, it looked bad, and he lost some blood, but it was hard not to fighting demons.

Bobby and Sam figured out a way to destroy the blade, which Bobby melted down. While in theory a knife that would send demons straight back to hell sounded great, it might do the same thing to those possessed by the demons, and there was the sticky fact that it was a key that could open a door to Hell. There were too many negatives to keep it around as a weapon, and that was even before you brought in the fact that as long as it was on Earth, Alastor would probably come for it. It was better gone.

Bobby was off helping one of his hunter buddies, and Sam was still sleeping in, so Dean had the whole house to himself, and it was kind of nice. Sure, he was still achy, and the snow started falling outside, but he figured once he warmed up, and the beer started painkilling, maybe he'd go out and make a snow monster. He used to make those for Sammy, to make him laugh, but Dean had a lot of fun putting them together. Sam was too old for that kind of thing now, but Dean didn't feel quite that old yet. Should've been, wasn't.

Was he a little bit angry at his Dad? The funny thing was, he wasn't mad about him not seeing him because he was in the hospital, or because it was his birthday, but because they had a major league demon running around here, and it could have killed them all. Maybe he was pursuing the yellow eyed bastard, maybe he had a hell of a lead, but … didn't he care? Dean tried to put himself in his Dad's shoes. Wouldn't he stay in pursuit of that demon son of a bitch? Dean told himself he would, but he suspected he was lying to himself. If he knew Sam or Bobby or his Dad was in danger, he'd drop everything and go running. They were his family. How could he leave them? He couldn't live with himself. Maybe his Dad was just confident in their ability to handle it. Dean sat there telling himself that was it. Did he believe it?

He was contemplating this when there was a knock at the door. Dean thought it might be the mailman, delivering packages, but he took a peek out the curtains just in case. What he saw surprised him.

"Finn?" he asked, opening the door. "What's wrong?"

Finn gave him a crooked half smile. "The guy with the massive shiner is asking me what's wrong?" Finn then held up a rectangle he was holding in his hands. "I brought you a belated birthday gift. As thanks for … you know."

"How'd you know it was my birthday?"

"Your brother mentioned it."

Dean nodded. Of course he did. "Might as well come in." He held the door open for him, and only when Finn stepped inside did he smell what Finn had brought. "Holy shit, what is that?" It smelled better than even that cologne he wore on their supposed date night.

"Your present," Finn said, putting the rectangle down on the coffee table. It turned out to be a covered baking dish, and when he pulled off the blue plastic cover, the rich, savory smell was almost overwhelming. "It's cheeseburger lasagna. My Great Aunt used to make this for us when we were kids. I realize it's kind of a weird gift, but what do you get the guy who helped you find your friend's body, you know?"

"I didn't know such a thing existed," he admitted, resisting the urge to go grab a fork and just eat the whole thing right now. All he could see was melted cheese smothering a red sauce, and that was good enough for him.

"Cheeseburger lasagna or gifts for guys who help you find bodies?"

"Both."

Finn gestured to Dean's face, and asked, "Demon fighting?"

He nodded. "It's not an easy job."

"Can I ask what they look like?"

"Demons? This black spectral smoke. They possess people to get around here."

Finn looked genuinely surprised. "You mean demon possessions are actual things? The Exorcist was real?"

"I have no idea if that was real, although I can tell you what they used in the movie wouldn't have actually exorcised a demon. Also, demons are generally more subtle if they want to stick around for a while."

He sat down on the arm of a chair, looking genuinely bewildered. Even after everything that had happened, he was still having some difficulty believing it. "How do you tell if someone's a demon?"

"Holy water burns them. They're usually a hell of a lot stronger than the body they inhabiting, but usually when you find that out, it's too late. If you wait for it, their eyes occasionally turn all black."

"Really? How creepy. Is there anything to do to, you know, repel them?"

Dean shrugged, wondering how far into specifics he wanted him to go. Probably not that far. If he was smart, Finn would just go on with his life like he didn't know all this scary shit was out there. "They don't like salt. If you line your doorways and windows with it, they usually can't get in."

"Salt? Didn't you use that with the ghost too?"

"Salt works for a lot of these things."

"Weird."

That made him chuckle. "You're telling me." Dean realized he was staring at the lasagna, and being a bad host. "Do you want a beer or something?"

"Oh, thanks, but I just wanted to drop this off. I'm going over to Harrison to meet with this lawyer over there. I'm going to keep up the pressure on the police department until they officially identify the body."

"How is that going?"

Finn stood up, eyeing him quizzically. "You haven't seen the news lately?"

Dean shrugged, and gestured to the still visible injuries on his face. "Been in the hospital. I'm kinda out of the loop."

A guilty look flashed across Finn's face. "Oh, I didn't know. Are you okay?"

"Nothing major," he said, waving it away. "I just missed current events of the non-demon variety."

"Well, the body hasn't been officially identified, but it wasn't that hard to put two and two together, since it was within a mile of the old purity camp site, and was the body of a young male. Krothe's estate has been closing ranks, and Ollie's parents are towing a weird line of not accusing anyone of anything, but wanting to know if it was their son. I've contacted some of the other people at the camp with me. We're going to make our claims public once more, that the cops ignored the first time around, see if we can shake the tree hard enough to make something fall out. Martin, the lawyer, thinks we might actually have a shot now, with a body and all." He looked sad, and Dean couldn't blame him for that. Again, why did people have to be so shitty to each other? Didn't they know about the real monsters out there? But of course most of them didn't, and Dean wasn't sure it would stop them if they did.

"Oliver didn't kill them all," Dean told him. "Someone out there knows something. If they have any fucking decency at all, they'll crack. "

Finn gave him a very sad smile. "You're a monster hunter, and you actually believe in human decency?"

Dean hated to admit it, but he had him there. "There is some out there. It can be hard to find at times."

Finn nodded. "You almost make me believe it, you know?" He then did something that really surprised him: he kissed him. It was a chaste kiss on the lips, but it was still a shock, and Dean didn't know how to react to it, so he didn't. Finn then gave him a heartbreaking smile, and said, "Take care of yourself, Dean."

"You too, Finn."

He raised his hand and gave him a small smile before showing himself out, leaving his gift behind. Dean had forgotten to ask if he wanted the dish back. Well, it wouldn't be hard to find him and give it back once Dean was finished eating it all. Which would be what, tonight? He went to the kitchen to get a beer and a fork, and found himself thinking about his Dad again. Even Finn, basically a stranger, brought him a gift and checked up on him. More than Dad had done. He could hear Sam saying, _"Why do you keep making excuses for him, Dean?"_ But Dad was trying, he was sure of it. He just wasn't very good at it.

When he returned to the living room, Sam was standing on the stairs, looking groggy and slightly confused. "Have you been cooking?"

"Nope. Finn dropped off a birthday cheeseburger lasagna. Want some?"

"For breakfast?"

"Why not?"

Sam had no good answer to that, so he shrugged and came down the stairs. Dean picked up the casserole dish and carried it to Bobby's dining room table, because that seemed like the least he could do. Besides, now that Sam was up, he could hardly eat it out of the dish like an animal, could he? He'd have to save some for Bobby too, because this was probably one of the rare thank yous that any of them ever got. It was a pretty thankless job.

His Dad didn't know what he was missing. But Dean figured that maybe this time, it was his own damn fault.

* * *

 _The End_


End file.
